Merry Christmas, everyone! (or whatever holiday you celebrate!)
Things were very low key here in the Vicki82 household. We did decide to have my parents visit (after taking rapid tests) because it's been so long and Kiddo wanted to see his grandparents who are triple vaxxed.
To put things in perspective, Charles and I have been dating now for 3 1/2 years, and he's been living here for a little over a year because of the pandemic (but didn't give up his apartment until last May). My mother in particular has always been a little squeamish about polyamory. She doesn't understand it because it doesn't fit into her worldview- where you date to find someone to marry. So when she found out several years ago that I was dating Charles, she thought it meant that Henry and I would split up soon. I believe it was Christmas dinner 2019 that I hosted, and she asked me if he could not come because she would be uncomfortable. I told her no, of course not. He's my partner and he would always be welcome in my home, especially for the holidays. She was awkward that year but tried to be polite even though she was obviously uncomfortable.
Then the pandemic lockdowns hit, so she didn't visit until the summer when things opened up, and even then we stayed outside so she didn't really know when he moved here, and we didn't feel the need to tell her since it's not something that should be important to her. When we started celebrating important days like Kiddo's birthday, I let her know that he was going to be here because he lives here. I guess she got used to the idea that her daughter has two men in her life who care about her and Kiddo, because for Christmas this year she brought Charles a bag of gifts just like she did for Henry, and joked around with him, too.
It just made me happy that we could just be, without worrying about dealing with other people's issues. That, and I'll admit it felt pretty awesome to have the boys do most of the work for Christmas so that I had more time to work on the very special Christmas gifts that I made for them that took way longer than I thought they would! I see all the whiners on the internet complaining that their husbands didn't help with the shopping or the cooking or any part of the holidays, which I don't understand- if they don't help, then don't marry them! No one wants to deal with an adult child. This year Henry did most of Christmas dinner by himself since I was busy, and Charles did most of the cleanup. I am SO lucky to have two such amazing men in my life!
And this morning I came downstairs to see the two of them sitting at the dining room table with the liquor advent calendar that I gave them both, with little shot glasses, sharing the liquors that each of them got this morning. It was the perfect gift since they get to be social and share them and discuss the flavours with each other. Warm, happy feels seeing my men hanging out together enjoying themselves, even if it means they were ignoring me LOL!
I'm super proud of the (after) advent calendars I made for them, though. They were way more work than I thought they would be! I thought, gee I can just slap a few coats of paint on them and they'll be done, right? But something seemed to go wrong every step of the way and I had to keep coming up with new plans! I ordered the liquor minis from a craft distillery so I knew they'd be new to both of them, and I know they enjoy sitting down together and sharing drinks and chatting- they've done that with beer before too. So I thought it was the perfect gift. I made one for Kiddo too, although his just had candy and small treats in it. Well and all three of them got a little note every day too. The first one said 25 reasons why I love you and each day got a new note, personalized for each of them of course.
I don't usually share pics here but I wanted to share these since I worked so hard on them. You can see how they started, as basic wooden drawers. It took much, much more time than I thought it would!