Keeping it simple for Thanksgiving & Christmas

Well my friends it is that time of year again where everyone will most likely eat way too much and gain those pesky unwanted pounds. At my house this year we are keeping it very simple, it will be just the four of us. Doug is working Thanksgiving evening, I know horrible right, well that's the way it goes when you are a pharmacist, somebody has to work right? It's really not that bad, we only go through this every two years, but it is easy to live with. The deal is you volunteer to work Thanksgiving or Christmas, in our case always Thanksgiving, and the next year you are off both holidays, they try to make it fair. Otherwise if you do not volunteer, your name gets put in a drawing and you may end up working Christmas morning or not at all, but who wants to take the chance, just volunteer and be done with it. Anyway, we are used to this every few years and it really isn't a big deal for us anyway. So I will be making our dinner, I love cooking this time of year, well most of the cooking, you see I don't do raw Turkey, absolutely disgusting, I in turn have ordered my Turkey from the Hamlet (if you haven't tried them, they are the best and they deliver worldwide), everything else I will make. My family hasn't done Thanksgiving in five and a half years, since my Nana passed away, but they want to start doing them again. Since right before we go married we always had Thanksgiving with my family but after Nana passed away it was too hard for everyone to get together, so we starting going over to Doug's grandparents. We didn't go the Thanksgiving after Nic was born, Doug had to work and I wasn't toting a two year old and a one month old out in the cold and taking care of them by myself, so we did dinner here that year also. They say once you have children your priorities change and ours are a changing. My aunt decided to go ahead and start our Thanksgiving and Christmas traditions again this year, you know where we will be going from now on, but with Doug working we will not be making our Thanksgiving trip this time. On my side of the family, everyone loves seeing the boys not that they don't on Doug's side but it seems like all the kids are in the way and there really isn't anything for them to do. And as for Christmas we will be doing the same, if his Grannie does her thing on Christmas Eve we will be there and then come home, because I have dinner to start getting ready for Christmas Day. Our new tradition is staying at home Christmas Day so that we can relax and the boys can play with all their new things. In days of old we would go to Grannie's, then to his mom and dad's which turned into a very late night and cranky children (and we would always have to turn around and be back by noon for dinner/then they would start without us anyway), those days are gone, my family comes first and I don't care how anyone feels about it. I know feelings will be hurt but that's just the way things go sometimes, but when people have double standards (preach and act one way and then do something totally different) I begin to draw the line. My family and beliefs come first and we are raising our boys to be MEN of GOD and do the right thing and it starts with Doug and I. So with that, I try not to hurt peoples feeling, actually I do everything to try to help and please but morals and the right thing will always prevail in the end. And this is exactly how our boys will be raised. Sorry about the rambling but sometimes you just have to get things out.