Just yesterday we invited some family friends to our New Year’s Eve get-together.  They said that they would love to do that, as long as their other two grown kids weren’t expecting them to do something.  I’d been planning to get an informal invite pulled together for the rest of our friends who celebrated with us last year.  Imagine my surprise when one of the other families that came to our house (and stayed until 3:00 a.m.!) sent out an invite today for their own New Year’s Party … and invited most of the people who were at ours last year.  I’m certain that it was NOT intentional, but it’s just frustrating and awkward.  We’d still like to do our small, intimate celebration where we play board games, eat lots of yummy snack foods, and possibly shoot off a few fireworks — weather permitting.  Their party is being thrown by three families (themselves, their parents, and their siblings) at a civic center gymnasium … loud, noisy, basketball games, lots of running and screaming in a location that echoes like crazy.  As I said, I’m sure that they didn’t plan it to “steal” away our fun, but I can’t help but be disappointed.

Thanks for letting me vent.  😦

5 thoughts on “Frustrated …”

  1. I’m sorry.  I’m sure it is frustrating.  The thing is, go ahead and have your party and don’t be offended if some people choose the other party over yours.  Each to their own, maybe they’ll want big noise and stuff.  Give me the intimate board games any day!  You might even have some people that choose to do both parties, I know that might happen.  I’m sure that your party will be wonderful and great fun.  I can’t even imagine it myself, I know this sounds odd (and I’m not having a pity party here, just being honest) but we don’t have any friends we could invite over.  Seriously, we have our kids and their families but no close friends that would entertain an invite.  It’s quite odd because we know people, just haven’t connected with anyone, everyone seems so busy.  Too busy to be friends.  Does that make sense?  Maybe it has to do with the fact that our kids are grown and we don’t have that tie of kids and activities to bind us.  It’s not bad, just sometimes I’d love to be in your shoes where we had friends to just do things with.  Not complaining though, love my family and we will have a blast.  And you will too!  I know it!  

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  2. @pottermom – I know EXACTLY what you mean.  It is difficult to make friends as an adult.  Most of these families are people that we’ve become friends with either through our homeschooling circle or through the community theater group that we have participated in in years past.  Even when you do “make friends,” schedules really make entertaining a challenge.  We probably have friends over or go somewhere 3 or 4 times a year, at the most.  One is our 4th of July cookout.  The other is New Year’s.  If we get those two events in, it’s a successful year!  :)I know it will be fine and that our little party (which will probably have 10 – 12 people max, including the three of us and my sister, plus her two kids!) will be lovely.  It just surprised me that the family that stayed the longest last year and seemed to have such a great time decided to do their own thing this year.  Truth be told, I think it may have happened due to the influence of other family members.  The wife’s parents are very domineering (they are “anti-Christmas” b/c it’s not historically the true birth date of Christ and so this family does not celebrate Christmas just to avoid the 3rd world war that would erupt if they did) and the wife’s sister & brother-in-law live right around the corner and have a great deal of influence on the family schedule, too.  I suspect that the parents and the siblings said “Hey, let’s have this big New Year’s Party,” and our friends said, “Okay …”  I could be wrong, but I don’t think I am.  I just got an email from the daughter of the family that we invited yesterday, and it was sweetly encouraging.  I’d sent them an email earlier saying, “I don’t want y’all to feel torn between the two events, so whichever thing you’d like to do – we’re good with it and love ya!”  She responded saying they would rather come to our little get-together, and just needed to find out what her older brother and sister were doing before making a final decision.  So that was comforting!  LOL  This girl is 22 years old – an absolute sweetheart and has kind of taken my girl under her wing regarding their mutual interest in writing.  Because I’ve known her for quite a while, and I know her parents, I’m very comfortable with her being Jami’s “writing mentor”. 

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  5. @pottermom – @TXMom2Jami – @gabrielpeter – Man…I am sooooo behind on Xangas! We have a get together at thechurch on New Year’s Eve, but since we are small, it will be small. Wemight have 20 people at most. We eat and play games, and then at around9:00 we watch a movie that has a Christian theme. One year it was “ThePassion of the Christ,” and the next it was “End of the Spear.” I thinkthis year we will watch “Facing the Giants.”We do not have a lot of friends we invite over, either. To begin with, our house will be in a state of reconstruction for some time. After Christmas, we have to tear out a wall and replace it. Termite damage. We have family (all my 3 sisters and their families, and our parents) we get together with on holidays. We don’t have close friends we hang out with all the time. There are church friends we love dearly, but we are just kind of loners, I guess. Their lives are so different from ours. Some of our church members still don’t live what I think of as a life that follows God. And so many times, I find myself so weary of trying to encourage them to do right.I greatly enjoy being with my kids and DIL, and look forward to the day we add a SIL to the group. I like to make friends, but lifestyles and schedules make it difficult.Laura and Marcelyn, maybe we need to take a night sometime and get our families together. (Gabe, Sweetie…you live a little too far away )

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