Since about mid November our weekends have been filled with family obligations and I'm not exactly sure where that leaves time for our little family of five. Every weekend has been dedicated to either my family or his family, but not our family. It was building up for a while and this weekend I basically snapped.
I had plans with my sister on Saturday to take Lena dress shopping for the Daddy Daughter Dance next Friday (not that her father has been to a single one, but it's still a big event). This is year number 4, Uncle Steve is her most handsome date, and every year we make a day of going to the mall, trying on dresses, going out to lunch, picking out shoes, etc. You know, all the fun things that come with being a girl. However, Friday night it gets sprung on me that we have a dinner event that we're supposed to attend with James' parents... In Elburn... A good 2 1/2 drive away from home for us. This was pretty much the final straw for me.
Don't get me wrong, I absolutely adore his parents. They're two of the nicest people in the world you could ever hope to meet. But this game of rotating weekends has left me exhausted and feeling extremely overwhelmed at this point. I just wanted to enjoy dress shopping with my daughter. I told him that I didn't really want to go, however, turns out we were already paid for so there was simply no backing out.
We did manage to find a dress and the perfect shoes, but I still felt like I didn't get to fully enjoy the day because we had to rush and be home by 3 in order to get on the road up north. Ugh!
All and all though we did have fun at the dinner despite the fact that we didn't get home until about 11:30 which is WAY past my bedtime.
Sunday morning comes and I haven't even finished my first cup of coffee when my mother sends me a text letting me know her and dad are coming down for coffee. Oh boy! Here we go! About 10 minutes later they show up and at this point the kids are awake and starving as per usual. Sunday breakfast is kind of a big deal in our house. I love to make a big breakfast. My mom on the other hand tries to send Paige (she's James' oldest who's 18) back down to her house to fetch a bunch of microwavable breakfast sandwiches. I'm sorry, but yuck!
All three girls are looking at me pleadingly not to skip making the waffles I'd promised, so of course I had to tell my mom NO. That never goes over well. I did end up making the waffles, but of course my mom felt it was necessary to give the girls a major guilt trip about "making me cook when I didn't have to." News flash mama, I like it! But that doesn't seem to matter much I suppose.
As I'm finishing up feeding everyone (parents included) James announces that him and my dad are going to go up to Gander Mountain (he'd won a $50 gift card in the raffle the night before) which left me with all three kids and all the cleaning because I knew they would be heading straight over to their house for the Super Bowl later. They ended up returning a couple hours beforehand and he did initially plan to just go spend the day down the street. Wrong!! By the time they'd returned I was in full swing cleaning mode and had started literally pulling the house apart because I felt far too claustrophobic and it was going to be fixed now not later.
He ended up helping me gut our room, but after that I was on my own. I did however make the kids his responsibility for the evening so I could turn the stereo up to eardrum splitting level with all the Nickelback and Buckcherry I can't listen to with the kids around. I continued to clean until I wore myself out, picked up Lena (Paige and Anne had already been taken home to their mom at that point) and ended my night with Finding Nemo (incidently a truck coming down our street tore down the cable line Friday night so DVD was are only option all weekend) and a MASSIVE apology for my behavior when he finally come home.
Oops... Better luck this week I hope.
I totally get like that when I don't get enough down time. You just described my typical week and weekend for the whole school year right up until the girls went on Christmas break and we finally got some relief. I hope venting made you feel better! PS - All the 'extra' family time would get on my nerves too - I don't deal well with the 'drop in' visit. Not my thing.
ReplyDeleteThe dress is really pretty!
ReplyDeleteI would not like sudden visitors like that. Especially when I am still waking up.
Yes, I was in much better spirits last night. Thanks for the comments!
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