So this morning I get a phone call. I had entered a contest online at one of the local radio station's website and I won a trip for two to the New Orleans Jazz Festival April 22-25. Yay Me! Party Time! Wahoo!!!

Well... that is until I remembered that April 25 is the day most of my extended family is gathering for my Grandma's 90th Birthday!

It took a couple minutes but I had to call the station back and turn it down.

Just had to share my pain with everyone...

I hope your family appreciates your loyalty, however, were I your 90 year old grandmother, I would have told you to go on the trip.

I would've offered to take Grandma with!!

We're going to have the greater part of Grandma's Children, Grandchildren, Great Grand Children, possibly even a Great-Great or two - maybe 50 people, maybe more. Oh, and I'm defacto in charge of handling the logistics for it all including food. Oh, and the party itself is supposed to be a Surprise for Grandma. She thinks it'll just be a local family thing with a couple of Aunts flying in, not the giant "everyone who can book a flight and rent a hotel room for that weekend" gathering it is going to be.

IMO, you did the right thing Mike. You'll only have one grandma...ever. No way can an extended surprise family gathering compete with a commercial festival...and I'm a huge music lover!!! Just an issue of priorities. I hope your family gathering goes off without a hitch and you have a ball.

Ditto on Glenn's comments Mike. Because both of my grandfathers passed away before I was born and both of my grandmothers passed away before I was nine I never got to know them and am sometimes envious of the special relationship many people have with their grandparents. Even if you weren't planning the whole shebang you would probably have regretted missing out seeing alot of your family that weekend. Hope that weekend turns out to be great for your family.

wow - you are a great grandkid!

I'll tell ya, I'm still dealing with the disappointment, but that's much better than dealing with the alternative. I was talking to my brother and he agreed, the gathering is going to be too big of a deal. If it was just the local family that'd be one thing, but once you add in all the Aunts and Cousins flying in from Denver, Chicago, Salt Lake... they'd eviscerate me.

It couldn't be rescheduled???