Expecting something different.

The BBQ yesterday was awesome. Good friends, good food, etc...

But today was really crappy. We always have our bbqs around the kid's birthdays, it helps with scheduling.

Today was Matthew's 5th birthday. (my baby that I just brought home yesterday is 5? wtf?)

We always go down to Grammy's house for a family birthday dinner, since Keith's brother & family are so fucking busy all the time they never have time to come to our house for the party (read: bbq) that we plan. He has 3 jobs and 4 kids, she works, and two of the kids have softball during the summer, I get the busy factor. Really, I do. But I swear, they've come up for one bbq out of the seven that we've had.

So anyway, today we went down to Grammy's house for Matt's birthday dinner. We get there, and she tells us that there's going to be a huge party over at his brother's house (which is 50 yards away, they even share a driveway) celebrating their daughter's softball team (they only lost ONE game all season, and won the championship).

Um, ok. Sure. We get to share our son's birthday with a shit-load of people we don't know. Whatever.

So we go over there, we say hi to the family, my kids are happy: there's a trampoline and a play set with swings and a slide.

Then everyone starts showing up for the party. Twenty or so 9-year old girls and their families. Some of who Keith actually knows, since he grew up down there.

I swear to the IPU only ONE of them even bothered to say hello to Keith. NO ONE said ANYTHING to me, not a Hi, not a Hello, not a Who are you? not a welcome to our party, we're so proud of our girls!

We drove a fucking HOUR to go to a party where NO ONE would talk to us! Needless to say, Keith and I were both really pissed, and left before they even finished cooking the hot dogs. I made sure I told my mother-in-law WHY we were leaving, too.

We went expecting what usually happens: cake, a few presents, singing, and family. She didn't even get Matthew a CARD for his birthday!

WHAT THE HELL????

I understand that winning the softball championship is a big deal, and those girls deserved a party. But why the hell would she think we would prefer that over celebrating our son's birthday? She should have called us and let us know at the very least. We could have gone down earlier and had a small family thing before their big party, or had Matt's dinner on a different day.

We spent maybe an hour and a half in Knob Noster before packing up the kids and driving the HOUR home.

The drive home was spent trying to figure out why people, especially family members, seem to not really give a damn about us anymore. They have their own little world, and no desire to expand it to include even their own family.

And then there was the issue yesterday of my adopted mom being in a snit because she didn't receive either of the invites I sent her for the bbq, and since I didn't tell her, it didn't matter that other people told her, she wasn't coming. Just another slice of pain to add to the rest that my blood/related family gives me. Thanks. (For the record, this didn't bother me yesterday, but after the shit day we had today, it fucking hurts.)

Why is it that it's your family, the people who are supposed to love you unconditionally, totally ignore you if you're not who/what they want you to be?

For the record, we took the kids to Pizza Shoppe for dinner, had leftover birthday cake when we got home, and Josie didn't have ANY accidents today! (She didn't poop, either, but at this point, I don't care!)

I'll post about the awesome part of the weekend later, after I get all this other crap out of my system.