NewlyNested: Inlaws in the Spring
Photo Credit: The Shifted Librarian
I am happy to say that my husband Alan has finished a big project and as a reward has come into some significant time off. Therefore, we spent some days traveling between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia to see the families.
The trip to our hometowns is usually done between Christmas and New Year’s and is often extremely stressful. This time we originally just planned to do one city at one time and then another city at another time. That didn’t happen. After one day in Pittsburgh, with the knowledge that Alan had a good amount of time off, we decided to borrow a car and drive to Philadelphia for Alan’s sister’s bridal shower.
Although my husband did get sick after the trip (another story for another time), it was a pretty stress-free trip. We have passed our first year of marriage. When we got engaged to each other we had only been dating 6 months. We knew each other, but since we were in a long distance relationship we were still getting to know each other’s families.
This trip we each bonded with each other’s families individually. I had a nice shopping trip with my mother-in-law, which I really enjoyed. My mother, as much as we do like certain things the same (like a morning cup of coffee served to us) hates shopping. I love shopping and my mother-in-law is one of the best, most patient, shoppers I have ever shopped with. The funny thing about this is that the first time we went shopping together it didn’t go so well. We went shopping (in a rush) to find a suit for Alan when he had forgotten to pack one. Everything we picked out for him was a serious case of “I say tomato, you say tomahto.” At the time my mother -in-law said shopping was not our best activity together. Now that we have gotten to know each other a lot better it seems that shopping is one of our better activities.
My husband bonded with my family a bit differently. He loves his Xbox and sometimes even travels with it. This time I had convinced him to leave it behind. He quickly became bored just sitting around my parent’s house. As if sensing this, my parents had bought him one of his favorite board games for his birthday. He kept my family up to all hours of the night, playing, talking, and laughing over a non-electronic game.
On our flight home we both remarked how much we enjoyed the trip this time around. I think one big difference is time. The second, the warm weather as opposed to the stress of being in the cold. And finally, we have both found things that we have in common with our inlaws which make our visits 100% natural. What’s it like when you visit home?