So upset today!

In October, the absolutely fabulous Annie Pennington (www.anniepenningtonphotography.com) took pictures of our family. Annie was so gracious and wonderful to work with us and what our budget would allow because trust me, I wanted every. single. picture. that she took.

What we ended up doing was buying the digital disk and a portrait of the four of us, then the rest of the money was spent on Christmas cards and Christmas gifts for the grandparents (both of our parents are divorced and have happily remarried).

With all of the drama that and complications of the past couple weeks, we mailed R's mom and stepdad their framed picture and the brag book that Annie was gracious enough to custom create for us.

I got an email thanking me for the framed picture, but this was in the middle of the vehicle buying, stomach virus hoopla and it didn't hit me until a couple days later that she didn't say anything about the brag book, so I emailed her and asked about it. She was nice enough to email me back, but she said she took everything out of the box and it must have gotten thrown away. I kid you not, I am literally sick about this. I just want to throw up, I'm so upset.

You know, I try so hard to be honest about my positive and negative qualities. I really do. And for whatever reason, people generally either really like me or really don't. Either way is fine. And this last photo thing is just it for me with my mother in law. I understand that she doesn't like me. I truly don't know why because she's never even really tried to get to know me. I also realize how self destructive and pointless it is to obsess about something like that, though, so I try to just accept it and move on. But if I'm being really honest, I want to have a good relationship with her anyway, even if that doesn't involve us being close. She's my husband's mother and my children's grandmother and I was hoping deep down that someday that would be enough.

However, there's so much going on that I don't know about or realize with that side of the family. There's not enough time to try and explain it and it's really not my place to do so anyway. I was informed when I first went to meet her that she wouldn't like me and that's certainly been the case. For years she ignored my birthday and our anniversary, from time to time she ignored R's birthday while grilling him about not remembering everyone else's birthdays, and there's been more than once when she's totally ignored the kids' birthdays. It's the latter that kills me. R and I are adults and can fight our own battles. If birthdays weren't a big deal in that family, that would make more sense. But she just doesn't bother to remember and more than once she's laughed about forgetting about them. Obviously, I don't think it's too funny. The kids are young and it's doubtful that it affects them, but it's more of the principle of the thing. After she forgot S's birthday and laughed about it upsetting me last year, I was pretty much done with all of it.

And then we had the pictures made and I tried so hard to pick out pictures of R and the kids that she'd like, and tried to make sure that I wasn't in too many of them. And then she throws them out. Maybe she did it on purpose, maybe she didn't. But from the tone of her email and our past history, the conclusion I'm drawing is that chances are good that it was accidentally on purpose. And I'm sad, hurt, and angry. And I'm curious to know what anyone out there thinks should be the next step - do I pretend like it didn't happen? Cut her out completely? I don't want her to make the kids feel like she makes R and I feel, which is pretty rotten most of the time. I just don't know. I really don't.