Family conflict - Who gets dibs on the house for bday

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08/23/2016 12:18

Subject: Family conflict - Who gets dibs on the house for bday

quote

Anonymous

There's a lot of moving parts here so I'm going to try to keep it simple and objective so here goes:

Sister is vising for a few days in connection with a baby announcement party thing DW wants to do. That's the main purpose of the visit but her bday also falls during the visiting time. Sister lives out west and I don't see her very often.

MIL also has a bday this month (but not exactly on one of the days these visits will fall under) and FIL wants to do something for her while all of her side of the family is together. BIL and SIL are also coming (approximately 8 hour drive each in opposite directions...one from the north, one from the south) so while DW sees her family more often than I see my sister she only sees them a few times a year while I see sister once every two or three years. MIL/FIL live about 3 hours away and my parents live about 1.5 hours away so we're somewhat scattered.

Everyone will be at our house on Sat/Sun so I was planning on doing something with my sister and my parents for her bday while DW entertains her family. I think we're all in agreement on that front. Something like I would go out to eat with my side of the family and DW would go out to dinner for her mom's bday. I guess people want to do cake after dinner and my sister doesn't like the idea of sharing her bday with MIL for you know...reasons.

Here are the options as I see them (and I welcome other possibilities):
1. My family does dinner somewhere and goes to my parents' house for cake. Sister doesn't like this option because she doesn't want to spend three hours in the car.
2. DW and her family drive to MIL's house and go out to dinner down there. This isn't really a great option because her guests that are driving 8 hours to our house probably won't be thrilled about another 6 hour round trip in the car.
3. A hybrid version of #1 and #2 would be that everyone could do dessert out someplace. I guess at a restaurant...I'm sure you can order a cake with a candle or whatever if you pay them.
4. Our house is big enough that we could do separate cakes - one family in the dining room and the other in the kitchen. I don't think sister likes this option either.
5. A variance on #4 but we could stagger the times we use the house for cake. (i.e. I take my family out at 4:30 and do cake around 6 and DW takes her family out for dinner at 6 and does cake later in the evening or vice versa).

Honestly, I don't really care which of these options we do or if there's another option out there I'm happy to do that too, I'm flexible. I understand where FIL is coming from as their family only gets together a few times a year (Easter, Xmas, Thanksgiving, that kinda thing) so to have everyone drive out here in the next month or two probably won't happen since it's such a long drive.

I haven't yet talked through each option with my sister but her initial reaction was that she wasn't going to come out if she has to share her bday...so I need to come up with something that's somewhat palatable for her. This shouldn't be that hard, I think if everyone is a little more reasonable we can work something out. Thoughts/ideas?