Our Christmas

Christmas was interesting to say the least. :)
Warning: This post is going to be me whining -- just prepare for that..
We don't live in the same state we grew up in and both of our families live in the same city so we always pack up and go there Christmas eve. This hasn't really posed a problem in the past because DH and I would just do our exchange of gifts Christmas Eve morning and have coffee and cinnamon rolls so we didn't have to lug our gifts down to the in-laws house. This year we decided to continue our tradition of not lugging our own gifts and did our gift exchange before we left. Plus DH and I usually get each other things that we wouldn't want our in-laws to know about so that's another reason we do our exchange at our own home. We also decided to take only Katie's gifts down to the in-laws so she had something to open on Christmas morning since our in-laws decided they weren't having gift exchanges this year due to financial hardship.
We got into town on Christmas Eve and unloaded our car and placed Katie's gifts under the tree at the in-laws. Christmas morning we wake up and there are extra gifts under the tree. My in-laws decided to buy for the grandkids this year after my Mother-in-law got a Christmas bonus. YAY..
Well, I wanted Katie to start off by opening the gifts that Santa had bought for her. It was her first Christmas after all and I had some preconceived notion of what I thought it should be. My sweet Mother-in-law placed her gifts in front of Katie and insisted she opened them first. I told her I thought that maybe she should open the ones from Santa first since they were carefully selected with love and I was excited to see her open them. I thought that maybe she'd want to wait until all the other grandkids were here so they could all open the ones from Grammy together. Katie ended up opening my in-laws gifts first.. My husband thought that since they were kind enough to host us for the holidays that we should be gracious and let her open their gifts first. I was miffed, but trying to keep my holiday spirit while holding back tears. After their gifts and the gifts from Santa were opened my Mother-in-law got out a huge bag and started putting all the toys Santa got Katie away in this bag. She left out the two toys that she had purchased so Katie could play with them.
My DH said I was reading too much into what had happened and that I should just "get over it" but I had always envisioned my Katie's first Christmas as opening gifts from Santa and then getting everything out and having a blast. I didn't envision my mother-in-law insisting on our child opening her gifts first. I also wasn't thinking that Grammy would be trying to distract Katie while she was opening Santa's gifts by trying to get her to play with her toys, and then putting our toys away "until we get home."
Gosh, this sounds like such a bitch-fest and I don't mean it to be that way... but seriously... NOT what I had thought it would be like our first Christmas. It really makes me want to move back to our home city just so we can have our own Christmas morning, in our own house.
Just us -- just our little family.

Just a side-note. I did enjoy Christmas as a whole. I love the family togetherness for the most part and was excited to share it with my family. I have a tendency to get ideas stuck in my mind, mental pictures if you will, of what I think something should be like. When what really happens deviates from my mental picture, I get a little agitated. :)
I really am grateful for my family and my in-laws.