First time poster, long time lurker, read the sticky.
My ILs bombard our house every major holiday. FIL is in a nursing home near us and everyone else lives at least 2-3 hours away, including MIL. My DH said that we haaaave to host his family every holiday because his father needs a place to go and cannot travel to any other location (he's on dialysis, is blind, and wheel chair bound). He has a very large family at that: MIL, FIL, SIL 1 (no kids, never been married, and generally a pain in the ass, nasty, boundry stomping bitch), SIL 2 (an alcoholic with DN1), SIL 3 (4 DDs, 4 DSs, and DH), and BIL (with DN2). Thank goodness SIL 3 does not come - she has far too many kids under the age of 6, that it makes it difficult for her to travel.
At first, I didn't mind hosting. I would get in a Martha Stewart kick and try to be the perfect hostess. But, I would always end up overwhelmed and exhausted.
This year, my DH and I had our DS in August (our DD is 5). I'm a working mom, but took off from August until November to be with our DS. By the time I went back to work on Nov 25, I had expended all of my leave. Since I knew I had to work around the holidays, and I wanted to enjoy a nice peaceful time with my kids when I was off work, I told my husband that I did not want to host Thanksgiving or Christmas this year. I did not want to cook, clean or deal with taking care of anyone but our family. I told him that this year I wanted to go to my parent's for Thankgiving. He balked and said, what about FIL. We need to host or else FIL will have no place to go. I reiterated that I didn't want to host and the reasons why. My DH agreed to go to my FOO's, but asked if we could leave by 5:00 to pick up his dad and have a catered or restuarant meal with him. I relented and agreed to this. Well, the catered/restaurant meal ended up as SIL 1, SIL 2, DN, MIL, FIL, friend of SIL 1, coming to our house when we were at my parents, using our kitchen to make food, drinking all of our wine (they went through 5 bottles!!!!), and DH and our family celebrating Thanksgiving part 2 at our house. At 8:00 p.m. my DH comes up to me and proudly says, look I've done half of the dishes! I responded "and you will do the other half since I wanted no part of this." I them took our baby upstairs and went to bed. I feel bad about being mean, but I was pissed. Luckily the ILs left the next day while I was at work. To top it off, our dishwasher broke and I ended up washing most of the dishes in the end!
Fast forward to Christmas. Once again I didn't want to host. But we haaaave to because of FIL. Yesterday was ok as I got to spend it with my family in the morning and his family did not get into town until fairly late. Today however, my ILs are coming to my house in full force (except for SIL3 and her family). I'm already dreading all of those people in my house. The thing I'm most pissed about is SIL 2 and her damn dog.
She has a dog that pisses and poops all over the place. In the past we've tried to block off the upstairs (carpeted) and keep the horrible thing on the first floor (wood). It always manages to get upstairs and mark it's territory in at least 4 locations - once it did it in 12! Last Christmas we told SIL2 and DN1 that if they were bringing