Good bye, Christmas

Christmas came and went.

And with it a huge sigh of relief. And I don't really know why. It's not like I had to do a huge amount of entertaining or visiting.

But I think it has alot to do with the expectations of Christmas- the most 'wonderful time of the year' and all that jazz.. for me it just forces me to go shopping. Which I'm not a huge fan of, particularly for those who seemingly have everything they need or want. Like my in-laws.

Every year it's a struggle with what to get them and every year my husband give me very little input into what we should give them. In years past it had been restaurant gift certificates, but then we found them in the glove compartment of their car, unused, years later. Then it was pictures of the kids. Cept I was going to send them pictures anyway.

This year.. I had a moment of inspiration. Or maybe just a moment of passive-aggressiveness.

Either way..

I'd been after them to visit. It's been over 1.5 years since we'd seen them and the kids really should know who their grandparents are. They're both retired and it costs 1/3 the cost to fly the 2 of them here than it costs to fly the 6 of us there. Not to mention flying/traveling with JM is pure hell. For the surrounding passengers AND us.

And since Larry didn't get anytime off last year, we didn't travel. And we got news that he's deploying for a year (in feb, now probably march) and.. well.. if they want to see him, they're just going to have to get on a plane. humph. so there.

I've been threatening to just buy them tickets and mail them to them. They have 100 excuses of what they need to do that they can't travel.. I won't hash them out here..but when I went to actually buy the tickets, Larry said to not waste our money. And hey.. they're his parents.

But this year it came up again 'what do get his parents for Christmas' and he couldn't' come up with anything. I still had a bug under my skin about getting them here and looked at air tickets, told them I was going to buy them for Christmas, and they said 'oh, no, let us buy them, we want to be able to decide' followed by the usual reasons why they can't travel..

So I bought them suitcases. The kind you wheel behind you. A whole set. Perfect for flying.

he he he

They asked 'is that a hint?'

hmmm...

What do you think?

Next year they're going to get a 'trio of dairy animals' or chickens or ox sent to Asia in their name, I think....
Wonder what kind of hint that'd be?