Minneapolis/St. Paul Nesties
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Re: Clicky Poll: Christmas shopping for your families
I voted keep the peace, but we actually just follow the family traditions. H's family has traditionally spent more per person than my family, so that is what we do. We are not favoring one family over the other based on time spent with them, we are just going with what is normally done within each side of the family.
Special Snowflake
We follow family traditions on each side - Joe's family has always spent more on gifts, so we spend according to that tradition on his side. My family is less gift focused, so we spend less on gifts according to tradition on my side. We spend about equal time with both sides.
jack | born 9.13.12 at 40w4d | 9 lbs 12 oz | 23 in
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Special snowflake.
Neither of our families are really gift oriented so we don't have to worry about gifts! Thank goodness. Not Christmas shopping is great!
We spend Xmas with my family. We usually spend Thanksgiving with H's family in New York but because of my H's med school schedule we were unable to travel. We hope to get out there in January some time.
It varies.
Generally, I'd say we spend more on buying gifts for my family - simply because we do see them more and spend almost every Christmas with them. There is also the added expense of bringing food/wine/snacks to contribute to the gathering. Plus, they (my sister and family) tell us what they want/need. DH's family doesn't do that and I had to flat out ask for ideas for his nephew and nieces. The adults are getting nice gift-baskets with goodies - which will probably be a bit more expensive than what we are getting for my side. Oh well.
But when it comes to all around costs, DH's family is more expensive simply because of distance. It easily costs us $50 a box to ship things to them - plus add in the thousands for plane tickets and time off and yeah, we spend WAY more to celebrate Christmas with them. Additionally, since we don't see them very often, I kinda go overboard with the gifts to make up for all the missed time. Last year (when we were in the UK for the holidays) I practically bankrupted us!
Our two familys are very different in gift-giving mentalities. My family is all about what we really want/need and finding that perfect gift that we'll treasure for a lifetime. DH's family is more "oh, I saw this in a random shop and thought of you" and gives a bunch of smaller less personalized gifts.
I don't want to say they give "junk" - but I still haven't put away the pile of things I got from them last year. I have no use for "French wash cloths" (?), a silver lipstick-case with rhinestones or a set of silver tea spoons - so I just don't know what to do wtih them other than leave them on the random bookshelf gathering dust!
thanks for the feedback, ladies.
My problem is this. My parents are the ones that we do more with. They call/email/text us, they invite us to dinner (they live 45min away). They include us in activities that they're doing etc. My Mom/Dad keep us updated on their medical appointments or even my Grandma's medical appointments (a cancer survivor) and my Uncle's appointments (a TBI survivor).
DH's family lives about a mile away from us. They never call/email/text us. I can count on two hands the number of times they've invited us up to have dinner with them and it's usually because my DH has to send in a pacemaker check over the phone (they have a landline, we don't). When DH's Grandma was going through chemo, surgeries and other cancer treatments this Summer, we had to call MIL to see how she was doing, she never called us.
So..when it came time for Christmas shopping, neither of us really know what they (my ILs) would like. Plus it's hard for me to spend the same amount on them as my parents. I know that we all probably prefer our own parents over our ILs but at 6:00am when our garage door broke we called my Dad, not his. When our dryer broke we called my Dad, not his.
I feel like giving gifts, no matter when, shows your appreciation to someone. It's more than just 'I'm giving you a gift because it's Christmas and I'm related to you".
It's hard. I know how my DH feels about it (he wants to spend equal) but at the same time, that doesn't feel right to me.
Ugh.
Well I am the equal spender of DH and I. And my family does gifts more than DH's family. When I first started buying for DH's family he would say that it didn't matter how much I spent on his sister, bro in law and their kids. I kept telling him that I wanted to spend as much as I spend on my family, but I did it his way. I spent less on them.
I think he was doing it out of hurt because his sister doesn't include him in their family's things or invite him to the kids's activites. My sister is always inviting us to my neice/nephew's things and my family includes us in everything. He felt like he knew my sister's kids better than his sister's.
This year I said enough. I spent the same amount on all 4 kids. We don't exchange with his sister and her husband because they don't want to. I feel better about it though.