A Birthday Party, A Christmas and A Clusterfuck

Now this was one of the lynchpin events, which contributed to the demise of our family. When our GD was turning 2, things were supposedly good with our daughter and the rest of the kids. Everyone was getting along, there was supposedly "love" within our family and life was good. Our gd (and daughter born the same day) had a birthday 3 days before Xmas. Now for a little background - our Xmas down in NY was always a bit of a cluster fuck because the same people showed up every day from birthday - the 22nd until Xmas - the 25th. Four days of holiday and celebration but it wasn't Woodstock I assure you. We had to stay with our daughter because we came down 6hours from NH and needed somewhere to stay. But from the night we came down until the day we left, there were the same people there. There was our daughter, SIL, our son, DIL, our youngest daughter and our daughter's in-laws. EVERY DAY - the same group... Now, I don't know about you, but we found seeing the same people (who had little to talk about), day after day - was a little boring. The second day - yes day (each days visit lasted about 5 hours or more), wasn't a holiday but everyone came over again. Xmas eve, we didn't see everyone - the kids spent Xmas eve at Mommy’s but since they didn't want to leave us alone on Xmas eve, our daughter's in-laws would volunteer to baby-sit us because they were Jewish and didn't celebrate Xmas with their family. Xmas day - everyone was back for the entire day. The day after we would leave. So it was our GD's second birthday - and about 2 days before we left to go down, we received a call from our daughter - She said our GD was sick and so the party would be cancelled. She said that maybe it would be better if we didn't come down that day and maybe just come for Xmas. Since I had everything packed and had already taken time off of work I said we'd come down anyway - even if there was no birthday party. When we drove down to their house - we saw our gd running around outside with her coat open - she didn't look at all "sick" to us - she didn't even have a runny nose. That should have sounded the alarm but stupid us - we didn't think anything of it. Next clue was my SIL bringing in a huge birthday cake which my daughter grabbed and threw across the kitchen - cursing - I was freaked out but when I asked her what was wrong, she said "nothing". So we got through the holiday, went home and then returned several months later to visit again. When our daughter went in to check on our gd, we noticed a stack of pictures on the coffee table - In them was our gd - blowing out birthday candles. When we started talking about when this party might have taken place, our daughter came flying out of the back room - screaming and hollering like a banshee... How dare we talk about her behind her back in her own house? When we asked her what was wrong and when was this party, she screamed at us that she hadn't wanted us there at the party. If she had only been honest, it would have saved us a lot of traveling, expense and boredom. So we left and didn't speak again for 2 years - it was so terrible - we missed our gd and lost 2 years of seeing her grow up. The other siblings did not speak to us either - we were given the silent treatment by all of them. If hadn't been for our GD, we would have probably never spoken to our daughter again Hindsight is 20/20. So don't feel so bad not being invited to the party - Juju - you could have been invited, dis-invited and then humiliated in the process. Just when you think you have it bad, you come across someone else you has it worse.