no gifts,pls

not a substantial post, just a random one to fill in the gaps.

i have a hard time accepting gifts outside my husband & kids. some might call it arrogant or just too uptight.well, you can't please everyone. may be it's my pet peeve ,if you will. i don't like it when someone makes a big deal with gifts (not wishes)out of what i like, much less my birthday. some people have wish lists they'd like to share with others. i don't like sharing mine. according to my husband's critical analysis, i'm just too much of a control freak to let someone else do something nice for me even for a day. may be there's some truth in it, but that's just me.
we had some family (his side) over for the holidays last year and it also happened to be right around my birthday as well. we were all just kicking back one night when someone brought up the subject of my birthday & whatnot. to which i quickly followed that up with an idea of just keeping it really simple like going out to dinner and maybe taking all the kids bowling to finish up the night. with the slightest hint of defiance in my voice, i told them not to worry about gifts & all that, because i really don't want anything,please! i can't remember if i put some emphasis on "don't want", but i might have. that didn't sit too well with some,of course. they were his family, so i'm sure my husband expected me to just go along with things for once. it wasn't my intent to offend anyone but i wasn't looking for any material pleasure rather just get over it & have good time with their company, that's all. i don't see anything wrong with it. anyways, we ended up going out to dinner & bowling and then some. i even survived an uncomfortable brief moment.

the week after they left, i returned all the gifts to the store and asked for merchandise credit to shop for my kids for the summer.