Seems that I wasn’t the only one that deals with holidays with family and being part of the military. Granted I knew I wasn’t but it is always nice to hear someone else is dealing with this too. I think this issue has many topics that can be dealt with that I hadn’t really thought of yesterday as I wrote on it.
For me, another issue is the fact of those last minute visitors that tend to surprise you. Now most of the time people think, oh the military can’t be surprised which while that is true it is also not true. Family can still decide to surprise you, where they call you from the front gate and say, “Hey, I’m at the gate, can you sign me on?” Talk about a surprise when this happens, normally this isn’t something that happens to me since I’ve always lived so far away from my family.
This recently happened to me and I apparently don’t like surprises as much as I thought. I got the phone call, it was two days after Christmas and no I hadn’t cleaned up from the holiday mess. Boxes still lay around the house, heck I still had to put batteries in many items and I was basically vegging out in front of the television and doing a bit of deadlines that were looming. We had planned on spending the night in a hotel, (whole other story) but then I got the call. “We are an hour away, hope you aren’t doing anything.” Ouch, yes I had planned something but guess I’d be canceling now and I did stress a bit on those deadlines. An hour didn’t give me much time to unwrap everything, distribute it to rooms and still clean house. I was definitely in shock, so much I even woke up the hubby. I knew he was sleeping today but we had family coming and he wouldn’t be sleeping. The kids enjoyed their time with the relatives and I must admit it was okay, however I did pay for this later. Before you decide to drop in on family, try making sure you give them a bit more advance warning. This way the house can be cleaned, plans can be canceled or not made at all and deadlines can be met.
While I’m on this subject, have you ever had to deal with in-laws wanting to come out while the spouse was on deployment? How did you handle this? Look forward to my next entry on this very subject, I must say it wasn’t always fun dealing with this subject but I’ve learned a few lessons.
Read a few more fun reads on the topic of family:
Germs and Family Get-Togethers