Day 79

I just want to say for the record that when we have kids, and they grow up and have their own lives and families, we will never make them feel guilty about not visiting us or missing family events.  We will just be grateful when they do come visit and enjoy whatever time we get with them.  Shouldn't we just be happy that other people like our kids enough to want to spend the holidays with them?  That's a pretty big compliment I think.

This year we are flip-flopping our holiday schedule and spending Thanksgiving with Rick's family in St. Louis and Christmas with my family in El Dorado.  At first I think Pat was a little upset that we wouldn't be there for Christmas, but then she told us this story about when she and big Rick were first married.  Apparently they were planning to spend Christmas with Pat's family and when they told big Rick's mom this she told them something to the affect of "they better come to Christmas at her house or they could just never come to anything again."  So, needless to say they went, but Pat promised herself that when she had kids she would never do anything like that to them.  And I am very grateful for that.

It's really hard having to choose between two families and I always feel guilty about not being at one place or the other.  I can't wait for the time when we have kids and we can just force everyone to come to us. haha
But, until then, it's just not physically possible for us to be both places in that limited amount of time, so we'll keep trying to split ourselves as equally as possible.