My problem was always with my husband's relatives who felt it was not necessary to call us before coming to visit.

They all live almost 100 miles away. When folks come to visit I love to fuss and go all out with a beautiful extravagant dinner. I also don't want people coming from that far of a distance "just for a short visit." There's also the problem that they could drive this far only to find us not home, which has happened.

If they lived around the corner I would'nt expect them to call first. As a result, my husband's cousin and his wife didn't visit us because I asked them to call first. What's wrong with that?

We also did do just as they said and visited once without calling. You could tell from their sourpuss expressions that we made a big boo boo. How was I to know they were planning to go out to dinner that day? Later on I heard from my husbands sister who said the ones we visited were really irked by our unexpected visit. I said, "but she always tells us to come down, you don't need to call first, we're family."