I'm hoping you guys can give me some perspective in my family situation, here's the deal.
My sister lives in Orlando, the rest of us live within 15 miles of each other, north of Tampa (my brother's family, my folks, and us). My parents were in Iowa until last week selling their house up there, Mom flew back with Shelly and stayed at her house until Saturday morning, my dad drove the truck/trailer back with my uncle, they got in Thursday. So last Thursday night my brother and I got a text from Shelly that she was having mother's day brunch in Orlando, and was making reservations at Gaylord Palms (later changed to Rosen Centre, as Gaylord was full) so to let her know if we would not be attending, but she had already talked to Mom about doing it up there, and "you know how mom always wants us all together for mother's day"...Well, initially I texted back and said there was NO WAY I could afford to do Gaylord Palms @ $59 per person. She came back that they were full, she changed to Rosen which is "only" $40 per person. Now, she's IT at Universal, her husband is also IT, they make like 3 times what Rick and I make, so to them, paying $40 per person may be an ONLY situation. To us, however, it is a lot of money, yes, we may pay close to that to eat at Disney at times, but we plan ahead and save up so we can do the Disney meals, plus usually Meag and I, and sometimes Catie, share a meal, so we VERY rarely pay the $150+ for my family of 4. Also, we really are not fond of driving that far, eating, then turning around and driving back, but with a reservation time of 1:30pm, really, that's all we CAN do, we have to get up for work and school on Monday at 5am. And my brother wasn't crazy about it either, as he has a 1 year old child who will essentially be restrained for 4+ hours, between the car and the restaurant, and an 8 months pregnant wife who isn't excited about it either. But Shelly pretty adamantly said she would be ticked if we didn't go along with it and attend, so we all agreed to drive all of us to Orlando for the meal. Last night she texted me that if we were "worked up" over the cost or whatever we should just cancel anyway, since Mom wouldn't want us there if we were going to be "crabby". I told her no, we were coming, but it seems to me that for FAMILY functions, we should discuss plans in advance and come up with an option that worked well for all involved. Well, now she is mad at me and says it won't be an issue, that they will just celebrate holidays etc on their own from now on.
Am I wrong to think that we should have discussed ahead of time and figured out what worked best for everyone, her included? We may still have ended up in Orlando, I don't know, but it ticks me off that she just decided that she didn't want to come down here, so instead everyone else should drive the 70 miles each way in 3 vehicles, etc. My folks will drive up Saturday and stay until Monday, but we don't have that option and neither does Neal. I'm kinda to the point of not really caring if she shuts us out, feels like she doesn't want to be a part of the larger family anyway for awhile now. But it is depressing because she and I were always so close, and Rick and her husband were great friends (and HE is NOT wierd towards us of late the way she is), before we all moved to Florida, we used to get together to play cards or go to a movie, etc at least 2 or 3 times a month. When she first moved into the house she is renting (6 bedroom in Windsor Palms), she talked about how great it would be cause we could come up for the weekend any time and stay there, etc, that we would be able to get together all the time, trading off weekends between them coming here and us going there. But lately she is funny about us being around at all, acts like we are a big inconvenience to her if we call to say we are going to be in Orlando (staying at a hotel, since she is REALLY wierd now about us staying with her) and did they want to meet for dinner, etc. She has been to my house 1 time since I moved in back in June, and that for 10 minutes tops. She regularly drives down for breakfast with my mom on the weekend and they go to a restaurant 5 minutes from my house, but they don't ever call etc. So I am sad that I seem to have lost my sister, but I just don't know what to do.
