Just to clarify, Joshua's mother is the one in the floral dress with blue shirt and his father is the bald guy standing behind her. Then you've got their 6 kids (3 boys, 3 girls) their spouses (meaning Dawn, Michelle, and myself... the out-laws) and children (Glenda's kids, Joe's kids, and James' kids), plus Uncle Tommy behind Joshua. And yes, Joshua's mother was 39 years old when she had him. You know you're wondering that, especially when his nieces are the same age as him!
Okay, I've been meaning to blog about this but I've been doing my "hide from the world" thing while I process my emotions and recover from the stress. All the tensions from my fears were finally let go when we got home. The good news is that my heartburn is gone! For weeks before the trip no matter what I ate I got the worst heartburn. I pretty much never get heartburn so this was really weird. Joshua suggested it was from stress. As soon as we got back home to Kingwood I could finally eat without being in pain!!! The bad news is that all that tension caused some after math health issues with my stomach. Not fun :-(
Well, seeing Joshua's family started off with a jab. We arrived at the Stake Center on Saturday June 21st around 3pm to help set up for the party. His niece Jenny came out from the church excited to see Joshua and gave him a huge hug, as his arm was still firmly around me. She was clearly avoiding me, despite the fact I was 5 centimeters away from her, so Joshua said, "And you know my wife Sarah. Yeah, I'm a married man now!" She just gave me a snide look and sneered, "It would've been nice to be invited." I responded, "Invited to what?" She replied, "The wedding reception! I never got an invitation." I was very confused because EVERYONE was invited to our wedding reception. I told her, "Wait... you didn't get an invitation? Joshua was in charge of getting addresses for his family. Everyone was invited." She just walked off and proceeded to ignore me. Yeah, so nice of her to blame ME for her not getting an invitation, yet she holds no contention towards Joshua even though it was his fault.
We went inside and I got to meet Joshua's sister-in-law Dawn, who is married to his brother Joe. Her and I are the most hated in the family (the out-laws) so we've teamed up and are the best of friends. We've been e-mailing back and forth for months getting to know each other and determining the truth. Joshua's family told us that her and Joe hated us. Dawn and Joe were told a bunch of lies about us as well. So we got to the bottom of all of this via e-mail. Dawn was the one that reached out to me and Joshua and I were truly touched by her message. Ever since then our out-law kinship was formed.
Dawn needed to run out and buy white lights, so the 3 of us went to Michael's together. This gave us a chance to talk. I told her about what Jenny did and even she agreed, "That's silly. It wasn't a formal invitation, it was just an announcement that was sent out as a formality because it wasn't like you guys expected us to fly out for it last minute like that."
Soon enough the time approached for the parents arrival. The party remained a surprise and Joshua's parents BOTH cried when they saw that everyone was there. His mother was especially shocked to see Joshua. So there were the hellos and hugs before they discovered there was a full on party inside. They never had a wedding reception (they ran off and eloped... you would've thought they would have been more understanding about Joshua and I running off and getting married without them, but hypocrisy prevailed) so the 50th Anniversary Party was complete with an anniversary cake, a slideshow, tons of decorations, favors, food, etc. It all went well. Fortunately the topics of conversation stayed light rather than controversial.
Miracle alert: Joshua's other niece (they're twins both 25 years old) Chrissy talked with me and actually admitted that she now understands why Joshua and I did things the way we did. She said, "I don't agree with how you did it, but I understand WHY you did it. I've been living with my mom and grandma for the last year and I'm having to drink a beer and a shot everyday just to deal with them. I'm going crazy!" I NEVER thought she'd understand... but now that she's getting a taste of the overbearing, life controlling, guilt tripping ways of her grandmother she's now realizing the strain Joshua was under and the desperate attempts it would take to get out from it.
On another note, Joshua's best friend Robert and his girlfriend came to the party which served as a good buffer between Joshua and his family. Then after the party we ditched the family and went to TGIFridays just the 4 of us. It was great hanging out like that and Robert's girlfriend Deb fits in great! Needless to say, we got home to Gloucester really late.
The next day was photos and then hanging out with the family. Since there were SO MANY people around it was easy to keep conversation topics at surface level. Then we left that night and got on a plane the next day so we were in and out in the right amount of time. Dawn and Joe (plus their two kids) stayed another day and apparently that led to some drama. I still need to call Dawn to find out what happened (and to be her shoulder, her and I validate each other's sanity when dealing with these insane people). But both Joshua and I agree that we left at the right time.
So overall, the visit with the in-laws went fairly well. They're still controlling, manipulative, lying, backstabbers, but we didn't stay long enough for them to take their "nice masks" off. Oddly enough, even my father-in-law was nice to me... and yet he boycotted our wedding reception!
Funny enough, the other day Joshua got an e-mail from his dad saying, "The economy is bad so if you need to move back home you can. No one will think you're a failure." Which was then followed up by, "Your mother pointed out to me that the last e-mail made it sound like that invitation was only extended to you. It includes both you and Sarah." I can just here Marjorie yelling at her husband, "Great! You made it sound like only he is invited to move back! He'll never come back if you don't include Sarah. You did that e-mail all wrong and now our plan will never work!" Lol! Okay, I don't know if she ever said that, but I'm willing to bet she did ;-P
We laughed it off. I don't know what those two have been drinking but it doesn't make sense to spend all that money to move to VA for Joshua to have even worse job prospects than he has here, when he and I just have to tough out 2 more months before substitute teaching is back in session. And then just another year of subbing with biology classes as night (He's going back to school to get more science credits so he can switch his teaching field to biology since there's an insane amount of competition for history teachers but a severe lack of science teachers, and he loves science more anyway, he just didn't major in it because someone gave him the stupid advice of "Don't major in biology. There's no money in it." HA! The reason there are so few science teachers is because there are tons of other jobs that pay twice as much as teaching in that field. Whereas with history there's a couple of research positions, museum and tourist jobs, and then the rest IS teaching. There's really NO money in history.) and then the following fall he should begin as a teacher making $40,000 a year to start. And after that first year he will become fully certified. And then from there Texas will pay for his further education. He plans to get a masters in school administration so he can become a principal. Which that job averages 80K! Granted he's years from that, but it's really not that far from now when you think about it. Anyway, that's my long rant about his silly parents trying to get him to ditch his well-thought-out-plan here just to move home and mow their lawn for them.
We went inside and I got to meet Joshua's sister-in-law Dawn, who is married to his brother Joe. Her and I are the most hated in the family (the out-laws) so we've teamed up and are the best of friends. We've been e-mailing back and forth for months getting to know each other and determining the truth. Joshua's family told us that her and Joe hated us. Dawn and Joe were told a bunch of lies about us as well. So we got to the bottom of all of this via e-mail. Dawn was the one that reached out to me and Joshua and I were truly touched by her message. Ever since then our out-law kinship was formed.
Dawn needed to run out and buy white lights, so the 3 of us went to Michael's together. This gave us a chance to talk. I told her about what Jenny did and even she agreed, "That's silly. It wasn't a formal invitation, it was just an announcement that was sent out as a formality because it wasn't like you guys expected us to fly out for it last minute like that."
Soon enough the time approached for the parents arrival. The party remained a surprise and Joshua's parents BOTH cried when they saw that everyone was there. His mother was especially shocked to see Joshua. So there were the hellos and hugs before they discovered there was a full on party inside. They never had a wedding reception (they ran off and eloped... you would've thought they would have been more understanding about Joshua and I running off and getting married without them, but hypocrisy prevailed) so the 50th Anniversary Party was complete with an anniversary cake, a slideshow, tons of decorations, favors, food, etc. It all went well. Fortunately the topics of conversation stayed light rather than controversial.
Miracle alert: Joshua's other niece (they're twins both 25 years old) Chrissy talked with me and actually admitted that she now understands why Joshua and I did things the way we did. She said, "I don't agree with how you did it, but I understand WHY you did it. I've been living with my mom and grandma for the last year and I'm having to drink a beer and a shot everyday just to deal with them. I'm going crazy!" I NEVER thought she'd understand... but now that she's getting a taste of the overbearing, life controlling, guilt tripping ways of her grandmother she's now realizing the strain Joshua was under and the desperate attempts it would take to get out from it.
On another note, Joshua's best friend Robert and his girlfriend came to the party which served as a good buffer between Joshua and his family. Then after the party we ditched the family and went to TGIFridays just the 4 of us. It was great hanging out like that and Robert's girlfriend Deb fits in great! Needless to say, we got home to Gloucester really late.
The next day was photos and then hanging out with the family. Since there were SO MANY people around it was easy to keep conversation topics at surface level. Then we left that night and got on a plane the next day so we were in and out in the right amount of time. Dawn and Joe (plus their two kids) stayed another day and apparently that led to some drama. I still need to call Dawn to find out what happened (and to be her shoulder, her and I validate each other's sanity when dealing with these insane people). But both Joshua and I agree that we left at the right time.
So overall, the visit with the in-laws went fairly well. They're still controlling, manipulative, lying, backstabbers, but we didn't stay long enough for them to take their "nice masks" off. Oddly enough, even my father-in-law was nice to me... and yet he boycotted our wedding reception!
Funny enough, the other day Joshua got an e-mail from his dad saying, "The economy is bad so if you need to move back home you can. No one will think you're a failure." Which was then followed up by, "Your mother pointed out to me that the last e-mail made it sound like that invitation was only extended to you. It includes both you and Sarah." I can just here Marjorie yelling at her husband, "Great! You made it sound like only he is invited to move back! He'll never come back if you don't include Sarah. You did that e-mail all wrong and now our plan will never work!" Lol! Okay, I don't know if she ever said that, but I'm willing to bet she did ;-P
We laughed it off. I don't know what those two have been drinking but it doesn't make sense to spend all that money to move to VA for Joshua to have even worse job prospects than he has here, when he and I just have to tough out 2 more months before substitute teaching is back in session. And then just another year of subbing with biology classes as night (He's going back to school to get more science credits so he can switch his teaching field to biology since there's an insane amount of competition for history teachers but a severe lack of science teachers, and he loves science more anyway, he just didn't major in it because someone gave him the stupid advice of "Don't major in biology. There's no money in it." HA! The reason there are so few science teachers is because there are tons of other jobs that pay twice as much as teaching in that field. Whereas with history there's a couple of research positions, museum and tourist jobs, and then the rest IS teaching. There's really NO money in history.) and then the following fall he should begin as a teacher making $40,000 a year to start. And after that first year he will become fully certified. And then from there Texas will pay for his further education. He plans to get a masters in school administration so he can become a principal. Which that job averages 80K! Granted he's years from that, but it's really not that far from now when you think about it. Anyway, that's my long rant about his silly parents trying to get him to ditch his well-thought-out-plan here just to move home and mow their lawn for them.
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2 comments:
When I read this, all I could think was: "She is a very brave lady."
Cause you are.
Aww... thank you Amanda! You always give me the best pep talks :-)
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