Christmas just didn't feel Christmas-y to me this year. I didn't think it would be SO different from my family, but it is. My family is pretty celebratory all the time, but especially at Christmas. There are always friends stopping by, drinks and cheers all around, and ALWAYS Christmas movies on in the background! With Scott's family, it was just like any old time we get together. We just sat around the house. They watched tv and movies (regular ones, not Christmas - except for one night I asked if we could watch one Christmas movie so we did, but they weren't at all interested). On Christmas eve I asked Scott if we could go drive around to look at lights. His parents weren't interested so the two of us went. But otherwise, it just didn't feel like anything special.
Oh and even when we went to his sister's house to open gifts, I couldn't believe how nonchalant it all was. We made both of our sets of parents a photo book of our wedding. We spent hours online, going through our hundreds of professional photos and making it perfect before ordering. His dad opened it, looked through it, handed it to his mom (we were sitting beside her) and she glanced through it and said "Hmm. So did you get this done by the photographer?" Scott said "No we did it ourselves online" and she said "Oh. Hm." and put it in her bag of stuff and continued watching everyone else. No "thank-you" or "it's great, I love it" or anything. Just "Hm" My parents tried calling me a few times throughout the day and I was able to talk to them once when we went back to Scott's parents' house to let the dogs out. I talked to everyone who was there (my brother, my parents, my grandma) and they all gushed about how they loved the gifts and thanked us so much and wished us all Merry Christmas!
I guess there is always next year. We'll be with my family then and it will feel more normal to me.
We got home on the 26th and didn't even think to go upstairs until bedtime. Scott went up first and then ran downstairs, back up, and downstairs again... finally I found out our furnace wasn't working and it was freezing upstairs (we have two furnaces - one heats the basement and main floor, the second heats the upper floors). He couldn't get the pilot light to go back on. We called the 24 hour line for the energy company and a guy showed up at around 12:30 am. He couldn't figure out why it wasn't working, but at least there were no issues with the gas (Scott turned it off but wanted it checked). He said best bet would be calling a furnace guy in the morning. So we froze overnight, and in the morning Scott called a few people. When one guy finally showed up, it turned out to just be some debris in some hose that was blocking airflow. He blew it out and it worked perfectly. Thank goodness! He didn't even charge us for it.
Yesterday we picked up construction materials because Scott is starting on our laundry room build today. I also bought tons of groceries so I can make some use of my days off - I am making 5 hashbrown casseroles, two pots of spaghetti sauce, a pot of chili, as much as possible of hamburger soup, a roaster full of cabbage rolls, and sweet and sour beef (we eat it over rice) in the next TWO days
Either I'm in over my head, or I'm housewife of the year
I want to portion everything out and freeze it so we can have good homemade meals on days when we are short on time after work!