Some background: My family has a long history of good spirited pranks for birthdays and Christmas. I'm not talking awful stuff where someone is the victim. Most of it is gift giving, and you usually know if you're the recipient of a prank, it's going to be a good gift.
To give a few examples, I got an XBox 360 that had been tucked inside a vacuum cleaner box (with the whole family talking about how nice it would be for me to be able to clean my apartment before suggesting I open it and "try it out"). My siblings and I often give presents wrapped in zip ties, duct tape and once even in a block of ice. My sister got her first iPhone that we put in the largest shipping box we could find, stuffed with crumbled up paper and packing peanuts that she had to dig through. We have a history of surprise parties as kids and as adults we often have surprise guests. Last year aunt secretly flew in for Thanksgiving and hid until she suddenly was sitting at the table when mom brought out the turkey. When my sister became pregnant with my parents first grandchild, she revealled it to the family via an acapella group. Like I said, this is all just good spirited fun, and no one has ever walked away hurt.
Soon after my brother became serious with the woman he eventually married, we came together to buy my brother a new motorcyle for his birthday. He was over the moon, but the actual key was in a box with two dozen fake keys. He was laughing the whole time he tried for the real one, but his girlfriend was appalled. She kept saying how mean this was. No matter how he explained it, she just thought we were bullying him. He loved it, and made Christmas ornaments out of the fake keys that year to give to each of us.
We have made a point not to include her in any pranks or surprises, but she still hates when we do it among ourselves.
She's so outspoken about hating pranks, she has just gone out of her way to ruin surprises. Thankfully, she isn't there for most holidays, so it hasn't been too profound. The worst was one of my nephews family birthday party. We left a note that his presents had been stolen by Bluebeard the pirate, and that he would have to unravel Bluebeards pirate map. This was going to lead to a series of puzzles, challenges and scavenger hunt activities that would take up the day... except she decided to ruin it. She took my nephew straight to his presents, saying we were mean to keep them from him. Instead of happy, he was devastated. We had done something similar for his sister, and he was looking forward to this. He still went through the challenges, but only after tears and it was half hearted without the prize at the end.
She doesn't get why what she did was wrong. ("He got his gifts and didn't need to do all that stuff!")
Which brings us to current date. My parents have retired, and we decided to do a huge family vacation to celebrate, and "give" them it for Christmas. This probably will be the most expensive thing we have done as a family. Obviously, we are booking now and arranging work schedules and passports. The plan is that we will each give them a present that's a "clue" to the big present and see if they can solve the riddle. Except, when my sister in law got wind of this, she said the day we book she is going to call my parents and tell them the whole thing. My brother is furious. My other siblings are furious. I've outright said if she ruins this surprise, she is dead to me. She is passive aggressively posting on Facebook about how we want to give an old couple a heart attack and she's the only kind one.
I don't know what words to use, how to make her get she is wrong here. Help?
Tl;dr: sister in law wants to spoil Christmas surprise. How do you stop a grinch?
Submitted November 02, 2018 at 08:36AM by Ponufic https://ift.tt/2yOJpYf
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