Thankful for???

This month is supposed to be all about being positive and finding the silver lining, but I must admit that I am having a lot of trouble this week.

We are visiting my brother and his family in Florida. Sometimes I have a hard time believing we are related (let alone brother and sister). We are so different in every way. That is fine with me, I have plenty of friends who are not like me, but some days it seems like our differences may be a deal breaker. Today is one of those days. I don't want or need to recount the gory details. Suffice to say that our extremely different parenting styles led to a problem between his kids and mine. This alone should have been no biggie, after all kids fight some times. The problem is that my brother and my mother got involved. I was sick on the couch, and so I didn't know what was going on until too late. It came to a head with my mom saying some not so nice words to my brother, and then my brother kicking her out of his house. Of course since I was the primary driver on our rental I left too.

As I said there are many more details, but it boils down to my brother's self righteous attitude. He has been this way his whole life, and sadly for him he alienates everyone with it. So now here we are in a hotel room instead of enjoying our last fun night with his family. The kids of course had to be consoled, and luckily everyone involved seems to want to make sure the kids are ok. So I guess that is something to be thankful for. It's the best I've got for tonight...