So time for some holiday drama! Me (38M) and my wife (35F) will often fly out to see our inlaws on Xmas since her side is the Christian side of our family. This year to save money we decided to do a smaller holidays here at home. We did a nice small holiday dinner at home.
Since our in-laws were planning to visit this coming weekend due to a visit to a specialist for my FIL, we offered to host them this weekend for a second Xmas. We didn’t explicitly mention making a holiday meal, but they’re driving 12 hours over 2 days and we’re hosting them for a weekend. We always handle meals while they’re here as they do this trip every 6 months.
So we decide let’s do a late Xmas meal. We were planning on spatchcocking a chicken (my wife that everyone might be sick of turkey), making stuffing, sweet potatoes, fingerling potatoes, a cheesecake, the whole 9 yards. We have bought everything already, but not done much prep besides baking.
Flash forward to yesterday, our MIL says she has an Xmas surprise for us when she visits. My wife prods her about it and she reveals she plans to cook and stuff a turkey for dinner Saturday and tells us to cancel the dinner we were planning as she has dinner covered. Ummm WTF?
Mind you she leaves today, drives for 8 hours, sees her sister in law on the way for dinner tonight, then drives 4 more hours to arrive tomorrow. So flash freezing a turkey then travelling for 2 days with a thanksgiving meal sounds like a health and safety hazard already. And considering she’s one of the worst home cooks we know, (think boiled everything and no seasoning) we don’t have a lot of faith she’s thought this all through.
So we put our foot down. Said no thanks, we have it covered despite her continually pressuring us to let her handle the meal. Well sure enough 2 hours later she sends a photo of a fully roasted stuffed turkey and asks what she’s supposed to do with it? My wife gets frustrated told her that she and her dad have a lot of turkey to eat. We haven’t gotten a response.
So this is going to be a lot of drama attached to a nice meal I had planned for the fam. Soooo, AITA for declining our MIL’s reheated surprise turkey dinner?
NTA.
I think you both should be commended for not telling her exactly where to put that turkey.
Credit goes to my wife. I was swearing up a storm in the kitchen making dinner.
She has tremendous control.
>not telling her exactly where to put that turkey.
*Stuff* that turkey.
She claimed it was already stuffed, so I went with the language on the question…. but yesssss
NTA. A lot of people let overbearing (obnoxious) relatives have their way about everything. Kudos for not doing that. I wouldn’t have, either.