Mary, my advice to you is to chill out a bit and take some of the advise these fine 4WT ladies are suggesting. You and Phil need to realize that his family is being very selfish and thoughtless if they are coming expecting you do all the work, go to the expense of making them comfortable without contributing at all. I hate to be so blunt, but if they don't offer to help, bring their own bedding or something, I think they are being extremely rude. You are being very gracious by trying to accomodate them, but you should not put yourself in financial or emotional bind to make them happy.

I'd be nice to them, and prepare a nice Thanksgiving meal, but would make it clear that they need to help by bringing air matresses and other items. Meals other than the main Thanksgiving, I'd keep very simple. Buy a big turkey and feed them sandwiches the rest of the time.

Hope you maintain your sanity and relationship with Phil.
Happy Thanksgiving.

You been given great advice so far. You should be able to really enjoy the Thanksgiving holiday too and not be stressed or worn out. They can pitch in and should be made to do so, especially since they invited themselves. I'd send them a list of hotel/motels nearby so they can get a hint!

You're going to have to let us know how this turns out.

whew! all weekend i cleaned and organized! i turned phil's apartment into the "living area" by putting both of our couchs in there..dont know how i did it.. but i did. so that way at least like 6 people can sit down at a time lol and in my apartment i put up my old dining table that i had to cut the legs off of b/c it was bar height...so now my apartment is a dining room for 12.
i decided that my room is going to be MY room... well phil is sleeping on the floor. but i had to just tell him that im going to need my space and i cant afford to get sheets and a duvet and everything that would make the bed presentable... so im just gonna shut the door lol .

his little sisters are out of school already and i can tell that they will be camped out over at our apartments so getting everything ready will be just a little bit more complicated... but maybe i can just send them on errands or something lol

i bought all my groceries last night... holy cow... good thing i havent bought any all month to save up for this ... lol we were eating cereal and rice for like 2 weeks. im gonna start cooking today so that way on thurs im not officially freaking out.
im so tired of thanksgiving already that i dont care. the people in my family that were suppose to come bailed out when they found out that so many people from Phil's side were gonna be staying in our apartments... so im gonna be by myself!!! i hope that everything goes ok... i think Phil is really nervous about the apartments looking nice... but unless he's got money somewhere that i dont know about... they are just going to have to stay the way they are! thanks everyone for all your advice... i really hope that i can just get through it with no major upsets!....
oh yeh... i got guts one night and said " everyone has to bring their own bedding and mattresses b/c i cant afford them!" it was great...

So.............What happened?...............We're waiting to hear how your Thanksgiving went!!

Yes! Yes! I've been anxiously awaiting to see how everything went! Please tell! :D :D :D

Yes do tell we are all waiting...

ooooooh my gosh so its like what? a week since thanksgiving and im still recovering lol . it was a whirlwind of people everywhere with stuff everywhere lol. i cooked all day on wednesday..i literally stayed home from work lol and all i had left on thursday was the turkey and the bread. well since i made the cassaroles the day before and all the other side dishes i stashed them all in the fridge. somehow the fridge got turned down to the coldest setting!!!!!! about and hour before we were to eat i was getting the turkey ready to go into the fryer and garnishing desserts yada yada... his family shows up and i go to the fridge to put all the different sides in the oven and then i realize.... they are all basically frozen. well needless to say... somehow the turkey fryer got turned on low lol so that took an extra hour and my sides took 2 hours to cook and then they were a little dry from being frozen.... so my food was ok... it just wasnt fabulous. everyone ate well b/c i didnt cook anything else all weekend..except for breakfast lol. i took all the girls to get makeovers by this makeup artist... and everyone hated their makeup ....oh well lol.... and then we went to monticello for sat. and they teenagers just wanted to go home the whole time. i guess it was an alright weekend... im just not up for it any time soon..... i finally got the apartments back to normal this weekend. lets just hope they dont want to do it again for christmas!....oh yeh his brother HATES dogs and Oscar of course loved him.... he complained the whole weekend lol

I'm glad to finally hear from you. I'd been wondering how things went. It sounds like everything basically went ok. We all have cooking stories about overcooking and undercooking, at least yours turned out ok even if it was a little later than you were planning.

Now that you have your apartment all back in order you deserve a rest. I wouldn't worry about Christmas, you have the perfect excuse for Phil......"Well, since I spent Thanksgiving with your family, I thought that we'd spend Christmas with my family."

Thanks for letting us know how things went.

Wow, you're more brave and generous than I would have been! I would have been like, look, you invited yourselves, our apartments are not an option! Glad to hear you made it through everything okay.

So good to hear from you and that you and Phil survived. Whew!! Don't you feel good having done this though. Whether everything was perfect or not, you did your best to be a good hostess. Hope you have a pleasant Christmas!! Let us know how that goes.;)