'Tis the season for relatives

Oh what a wonderful time of the year. This is the season of family togetherness. A time when we all look forward to trying to cram work parties, ward parties, friend's parties, birthdays, anniversaries and maybe a holiday or two onto calendars that for some reason don't get any bigger. Why is that? This is probably one of my most frustrating times of the year as we have out-of-state relatives who pop in for brief vacations and coordinating schedules to be able to see each other can be a logistical nightmare. Fortunately, this year we cuaght a break. Well, I guess it depends on your definition of "fortunately". My work decided to cut back on expenses and drew the mighty budget sword, slaying our poor Christmas party and taking it's head back to the board members to glory in their slaughter. I wasn't too thrilled about that because it's something we've looked forward to every year since I started at my current company. It's slightly odd for me to realize that this will be my 6th Christmas there as I don't feel like it's been that long.

Anyway, all of this is on top of the inevitable who's house are we going to on Thanksgiving issue. You can read Aaron Ball's rant on this topic on his blog and I share some of that. The problem is that her parent's do a traditional and very good dinner and my family....well, sometimes traditional and mostly ok dinner. Her dad watches football before and after dinner...booyeah!! Ummm...where would you want to be?? And considering that I'm as close to my family emotionally as I am to them physically, I'd rather follow the food. Food, glorious food.

So here's a glass of eggnog to dayplanners, Outlook Calendars and a million sticky notes that desparately try to get us every where we want to be on time so we can see all of the people we care about during this holiday season.