We went up to the parents’ house on the day after Christmas. It was pretty low key this year because we just had my brother and SIL over. Usually there is a big extended family to-do but there were multiple scheduling conflicts so they decided to postpone it and celebrate Groundhog’s Day instead.
My mother has a history of going way over the top for Christmas. My SIL and I have been waging a campaign to get her to scale it back. Normally she ignores us but this year we did end up with about half the gifts that we normally get and not as much candy. That was good. The SO was still overwhelmed since he isn’t used to having any Christmas stuff but it was good.
My dad took the SO to his gym on Saturday morning to work out. I guess there was bonding or something. The SO reports that he doesn’t think that my mother has anything to worry about but if she dies I’m going to have a new mommy soon because my dad knows “every hottie in the place and they were all happy to see him.”
Then we had to come home and reassure Riley of our love and affection. He gets very sad if he is left alone. The first few times he was ever left alone overnight involved large amounts of diarrhea and my bed so just being sad is a definite improvement. You have to go to him and cuddle. Once he decides to forgive you then he will cling for a while. He cuddled with me and then went and reaffirmed the SO’s love too and then everything was ok again. Powder was just happy that we were back because they had eaten all their food already.
We have someone coming to apprase the house for a refinancing (taking advantage of low interest rates to offset a country wide 50% property tax increase) so we have to clean, clean, clean all weekend.
