thanksgiving dilemma.. what to do?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is a no brainer-host your inlaws at your house and then make plans for the rest of the weekend with your family. You said you see your parents all the time and extended family is not as important as your husband's parents.

Haven't read the rest of the replies but this makes a lot of sense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is a no brainer-host your inlaws at your house and then make plans for the rest of the weekend with your family. You said you see your parents all the time and extended family is not as important as your husband's parents.

This won't work for a few reasons:

1. ILs will be here all weekend and made it clear that they do not want to "share" the holiday with my family - MILs words, not mine.

2. My extended family will only be here on Thursday.

Woops, PP here...ignore my prior comment. You're IL's are being quite inflexible!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

My in-laws tend to have a complex about where they are in the pecking order. As a result we spend Thanksgiving with them. I hate it because I would much rather spend it just my DH and the kids. It's even less fun with the Aunt and Uncle come because then all conversations around the table are in Korean and revolve around my weight.

Not to make light of it...but this sounds like an excellent sitcom episode. (Oh and I feel your pain -- my DH's family dinners are all Taiwanese or Mandarin. As far as I can tell nothing about me though.)

[Anonymous]

I'm sorry you have to go through this. Everyone I know that has to split holidays between families is ALWAYS stressed out about them. I'm just glad that it is a non-issue for us because my ILs have ALWAYS invited me to Christmas even when DH and I were only dating and my parents have never bothered. So in my book, now that we have children, they can't all of a sudden decide they want to have us over.

[Anonymous]

In these IL disputes, I tend to usually side against the IL's but in this case I see where your DH and his in-laws are coming from and need to side with them.

First point, as someone upthread mentioned - IL's have a higher priority over extended family.

Second point, and I know your opinion will be biased (as it should!) but what are your family/extended family really like? How does your DH view them? If they are truly warm, hospitable people then yeah take the advice of the posters saying your IL's should suck it up and attend Thanksgiving Dinner with them.
Or is your family/extended family a little on the difficult side? Do their personalities not mesh wtih your IL's? Your IL's probably don't like your extended family or wouldn't be able to tolerate them for a holiday dinner and I can't say I blame them. To be honest with you, I owuldn't want to spend a holiday with my sister's in-laws/extended family because they are not warm/hospitable people and wouldn't make me and my family feel that included. Maybe it's the same situation. Take a long, ahrd honest look at your family. Ask your DH to give his honest opinion of them.

Lastly, you could always do what Greg and Nora did in "A Very Brady Christmas". Greg wanted to spend the holiday with the Bradys becasue this was the first time in years all 6 kids would be home at the same time for Christmas. Nora wanted to go to her family for Christmas to see her favorite aunt and uncle. Their solution was Greg and son Kevin go to the Brady's and Nora went wtih her family. But then Nora saw the aunt and realized she missed Greg and Kevin so she hightailed it to the Brady's just in time to sing It Came Upon the Midnight Clear and help Mr. Brady excape from teh building that was collapsing.
So why can't you have T-dinner at your house with your in-laws but just you go over to your parents for a little bit to see the extended family? And make sure nobody gets called to check out a collapsed building.