Sooo...my mom wanted us kids to get together in August before she went to a family reunion in Iowa. So besides my husband and I there will be 4 other people coming to my house. That's stress enough.

My brother then had a “great idea”…he wanted to see our Aunt and cousin who live in the same area. I wasn’t happy about that. I have a little bitterness about all that. They never, ever invite us over. Ever. And my cousin has been to my house 5-6 times. So it pisses me off. I told my brother that was fine but he’d have to make the arrangement and we should meet somewhere. He was fine with that.

So he started working with our cousin on where to go. She gave him the run around. He actually shared the facebook exchange with me. She totally did not want to commit to anything. What an…grrr. Made me like her even less. Maybe she was trying to be funny, but it didn’t come across that way to me.

Anywho…

Then he learned our other cousin now lives in the same area as well (which I didn’t know…but not really a surprise that I didn’t know since they don’t talk to us). Okay, so then my brother is like we’ll meet at a park and have lunch. Because with adding another family it brought it up to 14 people. Fine. But no one wanted to pay the fee for the park to do that. My brother really wanted to grill and we need a permit at the park to do that. It’s $85 for the permit. A little high, I agree, but if we could split that between all of us it wouldn’t be so bad. But apparently my cousin indicated to my brother no way she was going to pay a fee.

Of course, I added to all this by inviting the other Aunt and cousins plus our sister. But I didn’t want to have anyone feeling left out when half the family was meeting! Only one from that invite is showing. Making the total now 15.

I finally said we’ll have the stupid get together at my house. I’m not happy about it, but we can grill and no one has to pay a fee. It seemed…less whiny (other than on my part).

I’m so stressed.

It’s hard enough being a host to my closer/immediate family, but to add extended family like that is really hard for me.

I thought I could handle it by reminding myself that people will help out and stuff, but it's not working. I'm getting more and more angry about the whole thing all the time.

I'm honestly not sure how to express my feelings to my brother about this. I know it could help me feel better, but how do I say it without being a jerk myself. I'm terrible at communication skills.