A New Year’s Day Family Fondue party is our yearly tradition. This is one tradition that was not passed down from either my side of the family or my husband’s. It’s mine, all mine!
This tradition was born out of so much travel for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Between both sides of the family we are rarely ever home for the holidays. The universal days off make it easier to have the time to travel, and it’s always good to see family, but I miss those times at home making our own family memories for the holidays–just us. Thus our New Years Day fondue party was born.
We even open our Christmas presents on New Years Day morning. It’s like our own Christmas a week later. The kids look forward to it every year, and I do even more. This year, as I have told you, we traveled 4 out of the last 5 weekends of the year. This year more than ever I longed for and looked forward to our quiet (Ok let’s be real, things are never quiet around here.) family celebration.
And then the bomb dropped. My husband invited a family over, without even discussing it with me. It was actually quite humorous. He was nervous to pitch it to me. “Wouldn’t it be fun to have so-and-so over for your New Years Day party?”
“No!”
“Oh, well, I kind of already invited them!”
“What?”
“It was an accident!” he insisted. “I was just telling them about how you have this great celebration for New Years and the next thing I know I invited them!”
Do you have these types of conversations in your house? Ha ha! Actually, my husband is so sweet, he was telling the complete truth.
I had so many choices in that moment. I thought through them. I decided. “Uninvite them,” I said. I meant it! Generally I might not have liked it, but I probably would have sucked it up and done what I had to do, but on this occasion I had been so stressed out, I just couldn’t do it. I have, through the years, figured out one thing about my husband. He thinks I have no limits. He is pretty sure he married someone with super powers. Ha ha. I try really, really hard to do everything he wants, but I’ve also learned that when I can’t do it, I have to let him know. This was one of those times. I wasn’t going to stress over it. It just wasn’t going to happen. He understood. He was okay with it! 🙂
As it turned out the family didn’t want to come anyway. And you know if they would have just told him, “No,” at the first I wouldn’t ever even have known…
And so we celebrated spending most of the day in pjs, feasting in a crazy messy house, and eating delicious fondue! I actually created two cheese fondues and a new Irish Creme chocolate fondue. I didn’t write down the recipes or photograph for blog posts. I just enjoyed the day with my family.
After the food was devoured we watched movies together as a family and played lots and lots of board games. Bliss!
One time in Nicaragua Hal invited a new missionary family whom I hadn’t even met to the Sunday service which was in our house at that time. When church was over, he said in my ear, “I forgot to tell you–I invited them for dinner.” I don’t remember what I threw together. It was so obvious that I wasn’t prepared that we went ahead and told them. They graciously ate whatever it was, and we became good friends. That gave me something to tell people like you who wonder if you are the only one such things happen to.
They didn’t want to come anyway???? Did they say, “That’s ok. We didn’t want to come anyway.”?
No, they just didn’t show up. Jason never got around to calling them back. lol
Oh my gosh – that is is weird. Maybe they forgot. Ha. I don’t know why this just makes me laugh. I’m glad it worked out.