Our First Thanksgiving

We have not hit our one year anniversary yet and we have had so much family drama and a death of a friend what does the rest of the year going to bring? We still have the holidays coming up and after my first Christmas with my in-laws I really am not looking forward to having another one with them. If you don’t know what happened during my first Christmas click this to read all about it. The holiday season is quickly approaching and I am really dreading it. The first holiday season as a married woman should be full … Continue reading →

When a Friend Died

The wedding is over, my family and friends have all gone back to Massachusetts and I am married to a wonderful man whose family can’t stand me. Most of my allies boarded a plane and now were going to be over 1800 miles away. We packed our bags and moved to an apartment an hour away from my in-laws but that was not the only good thing about moving. Both of our jobs were closer to our new apartment than where we had been living, before we had over an hour commute to work every day so this was going … Continue reading →

My Wedding Night

We were finally married and because we did not have a big reception we had a great dinner with all the friends and family that did come to share that wonderful day with us. My mother, sister and one of my friends came down to Texas from Massachusetts to share in our wedding. It was great to see them so we wanted to include them in our wedding night party. This was their first trip to Texas so we wanted to do the tourist things we went to a country bar in Fort Worth called Billy Bob’s. It was fun … Continue reading →

My Wedding My Way

The closer our wedding got the worst the tension with the future in-laws got. I wanted the traditional wedding things like a reception with dancing, I wanted the garter toss I wanted it all. OK so I only had a few people that I knew that I invited but heck it was my wedding shouldn’t I get what I want? Well the answer to that is apparently NOPE. I was told rather bluntly that the garter toss was trashy, if I had dancing or alcohol at my wedding most of my future in-laws would not come, the pastor who was … Continue reading →

Challenging Family Dynamics

It’s Memorial Day as I write this blog and although we have our meal planned out for the day, which includes my husband grilling and me making potato salad and desserts, we don’t know who is going to come over. We have sort of an interesting family dynamic. My husband’s brother married my sister, so our families are very closely intertwined. It can be good in many ways but it can also be a huge challenge in other ways. Without going into the details, let’s just say that getting together as a family isn’t always easy. People sometimes have their … Continue reading →

For the Good of the Family

Over the last month, I’ve chronicled my husband’s adventures in employment land. We discussed whether he should take the job, the tradeoffs associated with it, how we would prepare for the glitch in paychecks as we moved from one job to the next. We made the transition from one job to the next, and then our adventures continued as last Friday his new job decided it wasn’t working out and decided to let him go. This was tough. He’d had a lot of hopes for the new position, but the requirements hadn’t been clearly spelled out and there was frustration … Continue reading →

Well I Guess I am Sorry

So after a Christmas straight from a horror movie, my fiancee spoke to his father and explained all the things that his mother had done to make me feel unwelcomed in their home and family. My future father in law went home and talked to his wife and explained what she did and how it made her son and I feel. I do not know if he did this because he really thought she did something wrong or if he just said that to make his son happy. A few days later my future mother in law came to the … Continue reading →

First Christmas Together

So I met my future husband for the first time in September and the in-laws did not seem like they were big fans of mine. Maybe I was wrong but after the good-byes at the airport when I headed home to Massachusetts I was not really feeling the love from my future in-laws. When I talked to my fiancee about the incident at the airport he thought that his parents were just being protective, but he still had the image of how I was going to be best of friends with his family. He still pictured his sister (who is … Continue reading →

Name Calling

Choosing a name for your baby can be an interesting experience. Different couples have different ways of approaching the problem. Some try and come up with a list of names both like, or two lists of names and then whittle it down from there to names they both are happy with. To me this has always seemed a sensible approach and is what we did when naming our two children. But not all couples manage the situation this way. Recently I heard of a couple and the husband wanted a specific name which the wife hated. In the end the … Continue reading →

Meeting the In-Laws

When I met my husband he kept telling me that he just knew that I was going to be great friends with his sister and that his family was just going to love me. He could just imagine all the times that his mom, sister and I would go shopping or out to lunch. Love must have made me gullible because reality is nowhere near what he thought it would be. My husband and I met in a rather unusual manner; I was working in Massachusetts for a company that represented the company in Texas that he worked for. We … Continue reading →