How do you do holidays?

15 years ago

I'm just wondering what different holiday schedules people have with SKs. How do you share the holidays? Do you share holidays?

DH and BM don't have anything legal regarding holidays. The GAL left that up to their discretion?

They have always worked those pretty well, though. This is what they have always done:

HALLOWEEN--whoever's day it is gets SS SECOND. For example, this year, it fell on our day. So BM picked him up from school, took him trick or treating from 5-6 and then DH picked him up, and we went trick or treating around 7 pm.

THANKSGIVING--BM ALWAYS gets him first. Her family eats around noon. DH, my DD and I eat with my dad's side around 1 pm and SS never goes to that. Then we pick him up and head to my mom's side for dinner at 5pm. (This is also because Thursday is DH's day all the time.)

CHRISTMAS--BM always gets him Christmas Eve/Christmas morning. DH picks him up around 11 AM on Christmas Day. I've asked DH if he would consider switching (personally, I LOVE the magical feeling of Christmas Eve and wish we could experience that with BOTH of our kids just once....but DH likes Christmas Day better.)

FOURTH OF JULY is just whoever has him.

BIRTHDAY is whoever has him. If he's with BM on his actual birthday, we just celebrate a couple days early or late. Same goes for BM if he is with us.

This will all stay like this until SS is old enough to voice an opinion. He has never complained, though, seems perfectly fine with the way things are. Probably because he has done this as long as he's known.

I do feel for him, though--my parents are divorced and I personally find it stressful having to split holidays down the middle! :( But I WANT to see both my parents on every holiday...so what can you do?

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Comments (8)

lovehadley
Original Author
15 years ago
Wanted to add--with Christmas, I meant I asked DH if he would switch every other year. Not switch entirely.
imamommy
15 years ago
Because of distance (3 hour drive), SD is with whoever normally has her for Halloween, 4th of July and her birthday. (the other parent has from after school or 2pm-6pm on her birthday) On her last birthday, DH offered to let BM pick her up at 8am-8pm since she would have to drive 6 hours for a 4 hour visit and it was on a Saturday. She declined.

Thanksgiving & Easter are alternated, she had last year, we have this year. Christmas break is divided... there is 15 or 16 days, she gets the first 8, we get the second 8 this year. Last year, we had the first 6 days and gave BM the last 10 days- DH was trying to give her a bigger chunk of time because she had just moved away, even though the order didn't say it. This year, he's sticking to the order because BM has canceled time & doesn't actually spend it with her so he wants to have her here. Monday holidays are added to whoever has her that weekend.

If you live close enough to BM, maybe she can have Christmas Eve until 8:30 and SS can spend the night at your house so he can wake up there. It's so hard to split up Christmas, I used to do exchanges on Christmas morning with my son's dad and I always felt it wasn't fair to my son to have to be traded off on Christmas when all the other kids were playing with new toys and he opened his stuff & had to leave. I'm sure he liked getting two sets of gifts to open, but when we went to celebrating on a different day. ie. he spent Christmas eve/day with one of us & when he went to the other, he got another 'Christmas', it was less stressful for everyone. At the time, I had my other kids & my BF's kids so it was hard to not have my son with all of us on Christmas morning when he was with his father, there were no other kids at his father's house. My SD is in the reverse situation, there are kids at her mom's house and not ours. I think she'll have a lot more fun at her mom's, opening gifts with her sister.
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justnotmartha
15 years ago
We switch off each year. One year mom has Presidents Day, Memorial, Labor, Christmas Eve and New Years while we have MLK Jr. Day, Easter, 4th of July, Thanksgiving and Christmas Day. Next year we switch. We switch b-days, and have times set for school days vs. non school days. Parents also get time on their b-days, with the same school restrictions. Halloween is not a holiday we counted, so it's just who ever she is with.

SD doesn't like our Christmas Day years because she misses the big celebration at my mom's house on Christmas Eve. We usually spend Christmas Day with DH's parents, which is a MUCH smaller and quieter event.

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doodleboo
15 years ago
It depends on whether or not mom is in the condition to have them for the Holidays and also if she wants them.

Halloween 07 she didn't want them. Same with Christmas and Thanksgiving. It was just "too stressful" for her to deal with. She DID request them this Halloween and since we had them last year we let them go.

We had tried to do Holidays together but they always turned into a giant cluster "ahem" so we finally said no more joint anything. We do all celebretions seperatly now.

I'm curious to see what happens for Thankksgiving. I am assuming since she has no where to go they will just go with J and I to my parents house for the big family dinner. We haven't heard from her in two weeks so who knows.....
lovehadley
Original Author
15 years ago
Oh yeah...I forgot about Easter....whoever has him gets him second. So last year--it fell on his mom's day, so he was with us the night before and Easter morning...then he went to BM's around noon on Easter.

Christmas Eve....yeah, Ima, that is not a bad idea. I'm sure BM wouldn't like it...but I do think she knows it hasn't really been *fair* in years past.

Although if DH is happy, then I can't really complain.
imamommy
15 years ago
ha, this year was DH's year to have SD for Easter (Spring Break) but we let BM have her on that weekend since BM's other daughter & BM's BF's kids were going to be there, it would be more fun for SD to have an egg hunt with the other kids. We would have had to go to a community egg hunt because SD is the only 'kid' that would have been at our house. All my nieces & nephews are teens or grown.

Then, BM was trying to start an argument with DH that next year was her Easter because we had her this year. DH shrugged and said okay. He wasn't gonna fight with her over it, because technically she has Easter in odd years, he has even years. I had to remind him that he had given BM this year as well and he laughed... he is amazed by how she tries to start fights with him and how she either forgets the favors he does or ignores that he does nice things... and it really isn't important to him that SD is there, he doesn't want SD to miss out on fun. We had SD this year for 4th of July and took her to a fireworks show. She spent the whole time upset, worrying her mom was having fun without her and wanted DH to go buy her a blanket like her mom has so they can sit under the blanket like she does with her mom. When she gets like that, it's a downer for everyone and she isn't able to enjoy a holiday or party with us when she's worried about what her mom is doing.

I'm all for doing what is going to make the day more enjoyable for the kids. I used to 'fight' over having my time with my son and then I saw how it tore him. The last thing I think any parent wants, is for their child to grow up and have bad memories on holidays...
pseudo_mom
15 years ago
BM uses holidays to show "what a good mom she is" to her family (also a place to get a free meal) ...

The only holidays hubby argues for is july 3rd 4PM overnight to noon and Christmas eve.... from 5-8 pm mom can have everything else.

BM gets the eves we get the days ... but they go back to court every 6 months to adjust visitation schedules but always seems like mom has her regular visitation days on eves.

My BIL started doing christmas eve at his house 3 years ago ... mom put a stink the first year with "its my day" the kids missed the party because "it was her day" so hubby said ok, next court date he put christmas eve from 5-8PM

But his visitation agreement covers every day of the year.

Every holiday (he gets them back at 3PM on holidays)
jerseystepmom
15 years ago
We alternate Thanksgiving and Christmas year to year. It works well. Christmas is after dinner on Christmas eve through Christmas day dinner. Also, when we have the kids on Christmas Eve (like this year), we make Christmas Eve our Christmas day -- complete with turkey dinner! It is actually really fun because it means that my husband and I then have Christmas morning alone.......so it's like 2 Christmas mornings in a row!

How do you do holidays?

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lovehadley
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imamommy

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How do you do holidays?

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lovehadleyOriginal Author

imamommy

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doodleboo

lovehadleyOriginal Author

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