I was looking forward to the 2023 holiday season SO much. We had just moved back to the East Coast after 5 years away from friends and family and, the best part, we moved right down the street from my sister and her family.
Literally…4 houses down and across the street. Plus, my mother-in-law also lives in the same neighborhood (yes, this is a good thing, we have a great relationship), my sister-in-law is only a 20-minute drive away, and my parents only have to drive 4-5 hours instead of travelling all day on an airplane to come see us. The holidays were going to be EPIC.
Insert EPIC FAIL.
Let’s take Thanksgiving. My sister usually does Thanksgiving dinner at her house because I haven’t been here to alternate. So that, along with the fact that she has a giant table to accommodate everyone, and we still don’t, we opted to just have Thanksgiving dinner at her house.
Somehow, we ended up with 3…yes 3…turkeys. But that was fine as we were going to have 7 adults and 7 kids to feed, and we love leftover turkey sandwiches after Thanksgiving. However, my sister has one oven. Still not a problem. We planned on deep frying one turkey, cooking one in the oven, and I had an electric roasting pan for the third.
We bought the food, prepared everything the day before, and the day of…I wake up with a stomach virus. I spent most of the day on the couch, not being able to help my sister cook or eat anything. It. Was. Miserable. The turkey in the oven was HUGE so we had to wait until the last minute to heat everything else up, which meant nothing was the same temperature, we forgot the mashed potatoes until the last minute, the kids were starving so ate before the adults...it was a disaster. Add in your emotional family drama and who’s not talking to who for how long (don't ask) and it was not the best first major holiday.
But…that’s okay. Christmas was right around the corner and my favorite time of year anyway because it’s not just a holiday, it’s a season.
The Christmas season started off wonderfully. My husband and I hosted our annual Ugly Christmas Sweater party in our house with our friends, neighbors, and family. It was a great night of laughter and merry making and what I hope will be a traditional highlight for our everyone. That was December 16.
Thursday, December 21, my sister-in-law and I brought our kids to my mother-in-law's house to bake and decorate cookies all day. I got to watch my kids play with their cousins while I spent time with two women who I am so thankful to call my family. It was truly a wonderful Christmas break experience.
On December 22, I met a friend who lived on our street back in California who was visiting her family in Northern Virginia so our middle girls could have a play date (they became besties our last year in Cali). During the playdate, however, I noticed my youngest was not acting herself and my Spidey-mom senses were tingling…she was getting sick.
And sick she got. Fever, runny nose with the yellowest globs of snot that makes you wonder where so much crap is hiding in the tiny little body of a three-year-old, cough, and just the kind of sick that makes a toddler just want to sleep and snuggle.
It was a domino effect in our family after that.
Ironically enough, the only one to not get sick was my 16-year-old. Maybe all his time in the basement away from his family playing video games was a positive.
Illness aside, Christmas day was a shit show of figuring things out. Since we had Thanksgiving dinner at my sister's, we agreed we would do Christmas breakfast at our house and each following year we would just alternate. Well, my sister's kids are a little younger than mine (ages 5, 3, 1.5) and they get up at 6:00am. Mine do not. We had to wake Rylyn up at 8:30am just so we could start the opening of presents because we had a full day planned.
This meant that my sister, her husband, and her kids were already done opening presents by the time we just started, so they sat around waiting for us to be done so they could come over and start breakfast. It was not the best plan.
They finally came over, the guys got to cooking, and we finished presents with the cousins. (Actually...we forgot a gift for my brother-in-law that we still have yet to give him...maybe soon he'll get it...maybe).
After breakfast, we cleaned up and got ready to head to my husband's grandparent's home where thirty...yes 30...family members including aunts, uncles, cousins, second cousins, grandparents, parents gathered with presents and SO MUCH FOOD.
It was wonderful and chaotic at the same time, and I'm so glad we got to experience it. But by the end of the day, we were exhausted. We hauled everyone back home, changed, and crashed. Hard.
I woke up the next day sick as a dog. So sick that my husband pumped me full of nighttime medicine and I slept allllll day long and didn't wake up until after 4 in the evening.
After that it was a round robin of fevers, headaches, exhaustion, runny noses and coughs from one kid to the next culminating in my husband going to the ER New Year's Eve with a raging ear infection that eventually ruptured his ear drum.
There was no spiked egg nogg being drunk by a roaring fire while watching Christmas movies. There were no fun card games with friends while laughter ensued. There was no caroling, no Christmas light watching, no post-Christmas enjoyment WHATSOEVER.
Sickness and laundry were the only things that grew over our holiday break.
Now, 15 days into the new year, our decorations are all down. There is no more tree lit with twinkling lights. No more Clark Griswald house lit up at night. Our house is back to being boring and unfinished (something I could temporarily forget surrounded by our lovely decorations).
But, we are all back to being healthy and looking forward to what the new year has to offer. My sister and I joke that now that we had our trial run of how to handle the holidays, this year's holidays should be a breeze. (We will be doing Thanksgiving at my house, as I have 2 ovens, and Christmas breakfast at her house, as her kids get up at the crack of dawn, and we won't be rotating each year lol).
One of our neighbors already penciled in her calendar the date for our ugly sweater party because she was unable to attend this past year and wanted to make sure she didn't plan anything that same weekend and miss it again. I guess if your neighbors are already planning to come to your holiday party 11 months from now, it couldn't have all been bad.
We also had the added bonus of our house coming in 3rd for our neighborhood's most traditional house decoration category. Did I mention I married Clark Griswald?
I guess it wasn't all bad. But lordy, was it a shit show of events. Here's to 2024, may this year's holidays be much less chaotic, germy, and emotionally charged as this past year.
Phew.
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