Before I had kids and even when the kids were small, I preferred to travel home to where my parents and sisters are, and where I grew up, to spend holidays with them. I felt it was imperative to all be together at Christmas, Easter and Thanksgiving and if we didn’t get there, we were missing out.

I’ve since grown out of that and now I prefer to be at home on the bigger holidays, doing our own thing and carrying on with our own traditions. Travelling over 600 km to live out a holiday on someone else’s terms no longer sounds like my idea of a good time.

Being with family is great and all but I want to pick types of pies we’ll eat. I want the meal to be exactly the way I choose it. After all, each holiday only comes around once a year and I am the matriarch of my family. I wear an invisible crown, just kidding.

If my parents or sisters and their families wanted to join us for these holidays then that would be spectacular but it rarely happens. People who live in Thompson joke that the highway running south out of town is a one way road and it only goes south. Rarely do people drive north on it, to come to Thompson, unless you live here and are returning home from a trip somewhere.

The last time my parents were here to see us is almost two years ago. They came at Thanksgiving that year. I think they stayed one night. In a hotel. My Dad is funny like that. We have the room, but he prefers his own space.

It was actually kind of funny, my Dad is so old fashioned and set in his farmer ways. He believes that dogs belong outside, not in the house. We have a golden retriever and she’s the biggest suck on earth and is really only outside if we are outside. At least she’s not hyper, she’s pretty mellow.

But that Thanksgiving, Clint’s daughter also came for the weekend from out of town and she brought her dog with her, Scooby. Scooby is a mutt of some kind and quite a bit more high strung than our Remi is, but you know how getting two dogs together sometimes is. They feed off of each other and they act like hyper, loaded up on sugar toddlers.

So my poor Dad, whose anxiety is through the roof as it is, he’s sitting there at the table and these two crazy dogs are running in and out the patio doors and around and around the table. He was probably ready to lose his mind. To me, it was comical but I don’t think my Dad saw it that way.

They actually only stayed a couple of hours, if that, and went back to their hotel room.

There were a few Christmases, years ago when the kids were small and my Dad’s anxiety was small, that they would come up and spend Christmas with us. I loved that. It sounds so selfish but I loved that I was able to steal my parents for Christmas. It made me feel so good that they would leave their home, both of my sisters and their families and all the extended family around where they lived, just to drive 600 km to be with us.

Those are memories I will cherish.