DH was pretty great last night.

We are having dinner together talking about Thanksgiving and the next couple weeks (our town has a holiday festival this weekend and then it's SD12's 13th Birthday, then of course Xmas.

DH then tells me, "You know, the SDs are going to be at BMs this weekend."
Me, "Really? But isn't it your week?" (they are 50/50 and BM had them almost all Thanksgiving week).

Then it comes out that BM said that because the November schedule was altered (at her request BTW) and DH had them for two weekends in a row she should have them two weekends in a row. Which means that they would miss the holiday festival (SD10 is supposed to be in the parade) AND alters the entire schedule for the rest of December so SD12 won't be at our place on her birthday weekend (per the CO)...BM was planning on bringing her and her friends over the day of. SD12 was really concerned b/c she wants to decorate and do some stuff in preparation for her party. AND BM wanted to break up Xmas week so that she'd have them for 9 or 10 total days and DH for just 5. Her having Thanksgiving and DH having Xmas was HER idea.

DH remained really calm, took pictures of the calendars for Nov/Dec (I mark down the days we had the SDs and our schedule upcoming so the schedule is known)and told the SDs that he will take care of it. Then after dinner he quietly retreated to the office. No yelling, no ranting. Just sent a message to BM.

We'll see what her response is.

I am also going to let DH know that starting in January I am going to note each day DH has the SDs. I suspect BM may start grousing about getting more CS (because you know, he's married and has two incomes now!) so he needs to prove he has them at least 50% (I suspect he has them more than that). I'm also going to tell him to start keeping track of what he's buying for them; clothes, electronics, other items that really should be BOTH of them buying, not just DH.

And then we decided to go for a fake tree this year. Because of SDs schedule we'd have to get a tree this weekend. I said not so early b/c last year the tree was a dried crisp (4 weeks out) in spite of watering and I won't have a fire bomb in the house. So DH and SDs were surprisingly ok with getting a nice fake tree. They can put it up and take it down whenever and I won't worry. So win for all!

And the best part is SD(stb13) wants to make her own birthday cake. So I'm off the hook for that! My job it to just make cocoa. JOY!