Today, we went to a family birthday party. It was great to see “everyone”. We used to see everyone pretty often. In fact, there were kinda regular Sunday dinners at E’s mom’s house when he and I first started dating. Literally every family member came to those. They were great. Then, we had about half the family at Thanksgiving but almost everyone at Christmas. And no one missed Easter.

Then, the grandkids had their own kids. Holidays went from rare to never for some family members. Those random Sunday dinners went the way of the dodo bird. E & I eventually bailed, too. We were some of the last holdouts for Thanksgiving and Christmas, but the first to abandon Easter after being left alone a couple of times.

With Mom in memory care, the family doesn’t do Thanksgiving or Christmas anymore. One sister suggested we do a holiday gathering of some sort, but without all the presents and food. I quickly suggested Twelfth Night. It’s the 12th day of Christmas and we can always plan for the weekend after New Years. I think it’s perfect. Then the conversation went back to the “holidays”. [I didn’t ::sigh:: but come on. There are 12 days of Christmas; they start on Christmas Day.] “Between Thanksgiving and Christmas” was the consensus in that small group. I explained that that cuts us out. “no no no, between them”. “yeah, we’re busy.” “every weekend?” “yep, every year.”

So, that got me to thinking. What weekends do we have and here’s the list of our #childfree lives and the busy that is us.

• Sept 5 – Dec 5: nearly every Saturday, some Thursdays, even a Friday one time. College football for our two teams. For me, that also includes doing my part with my little alumni club.
• August – February: nearly every Sunday: NFL. I couldn’t care less, but E is glued to the TV for that whole time. He plans it in advance and won’t miss it for hardly anything. Today’s party was a) an exception, b) also had football, and c) didn’t overlap his favorite team/game, the Cowboys.
• Sept 19th: Texas Craft Brewers Festival. Expensive tickets were purchased well in advance. And, E is the designated driver for me and two friends, so they are counting on us, too.
• Sept 26-27th: Pecan Street Festival. We went last year and loved it. While it’s a 2x per year event, the spring date never works for us.
• October: big football like Miami at FSU. It’s also the nicest month of the year. We’re not yet fully booked, but always end up with plans every weekend.
• October 24/31: Halloween parties; It’s my favorite holiday of the year. I’m not missing that for anything/one.
• November 26: Thanksgiving
• November 27: Birthday Bacchanal begins. E and several of our friends have birthdays in the last week of November and first week of December. It’s usually a week-to-10-days long celebration with each birthday honoree picking the activity for their day. E requests that week off in like July or something.
• Dec 5th: This year, it’s a family wedding.
• Dec 12th (annually on the Saturday): a bar-crawl benefit for ACC schools. A couple of hundred alumni drink for a cause.
• Somewhere in there, we need to make the big road trip to see my family (or what’s left of it).

So, um, yeah, we’re booked ~every weekend for the entire fall, especially during the “holidays”. The exceptions are a Saturday in September (ooops, that passed) and maybe one or two Saturdays in November.

I didn’t tell them that I don’t do holiday parties anymore, but it won’t likely matter.