For several years now, the tradition has been to host Thanksgiving dinner at our house. Even though our family has known this for years and have attended our Thanksgiving dinner each year, I still have certain members who complain about not having been sent an invitation (even though I never do) or not giving them enough notice (even though it's been talked about it weeks before).

As the years go by, the family keeps growing and growing...and my "big" house suddenly is becoming "smaller". To the point that for two years in a row now, we've had to move our dining room in the living room to accommodate everyone for a sit down dinner.

This Thanksgiving, we had to use two of our dining room tables and two picnic tables to be able to seat everyone at the dinner table. Not including the kids table! We were expecting a little over 25 adults and 15 children.

As the family keeps growing, it's becoming harder to seat everyone together on the same table or in the same side/section of the table. My dad, for the first time in years, actually showed up for dinner and we ended up moving a couple people around. In doing so, I ended up "offending" certain people either because they weren't seated in their "usual" spot or at the "head of the table" or because they were put next to someone they did not want to be seated next to.

When they were all asked to sit at their assigned seats, everyone began moving and reassigning their seats and by the time everyone got seated, some members had already started eating dinner before we even said grace. I heard some whispers of family members complaining about the food being "cold" and how they had to "serve themselves" or didn't get to eat some of the food. The food was set at the table and everyone passes the food around. I was the last one to sit down and did not even get to enjoy my dinner.

Every year, has been the same, so what made this year different? What did they expect...to be catered?! There was plenty of food for everyone to eat... and how did they expect me to have everything served hot right out of the oven?

I thought Thanksgiving was a time for families to celebrate a holiday and an opportunity to get together and enjoy a nice dinner and share their company. But apparently this was not the case. To me, it appeared to be just another excuse for people to get together and "complain/criticize" just about everything. It also became another excuse to "party".

My sister AC came over to my house the night before to make all the preparations for the Thanksgiving dinner and spent the whole day on Thanksgiving Day cooking. My other sister came to my house several times during the week to help me clean up and get the house ready for Thanksgiving. It took me two days after Thanksgiving to clean up the mess that was left over. The problem is that only a few people actually help clean and even so, in the end, I still end up doing most of the cleaning afterwards.

Hosting Thanksgiving dinner for a big family, took a lot of time, preparation and work... and for people to come criticize and complain... really pissed me off! There was just too much going on. It made me realize certain things.... and one of it was...is this worth the effort?

Thank goodness Thanksgiving comes just once a year. I overheard a family member suggesting having Christmas at my place.... ha! I don't think so!

I think one holiday is enough!