Comments: Are we there yet?

Reasonable folk never expect the people with kids to drive from house to house, relative to relative, usually in some insane traffic jam or snow/rain/thunder storm. No one gives you grief when you say, "Oh, what are we doing for [holiday]? We're going to celebrate by doing [x] here at home..." Even a house-bound granny will forgive your absence, she understands what's involved with taking the kids anywhere, she's been there with the strollers and binkys and sippy cups and diapers and changes of clothes and the prerequisite half a toy store fundamental to toddler happiness (even though --inevitably-- one suddenly essential trinket will be left behind; and oh yes, there will be chaos and misery because of it). People seem to get how you might not want to drive four hundred miles with a cranky little one screaming in the back seat, unload and set up a smaller, travel-version of the house you just left behind, just so you can eat uncle Frank's franks for an hour and then miss the fireworks anyway because you have to leave early to get a jump on traffic. The ex and I used to get giddy with the fantasy of not only NOT having to schlep around all day each holiday, but that it wouldn't even be expected of us. Your family and friends would just have to understand that they had to go to the mountain, not the other way around.