Hi I'm after a place to vent before I scream, it's about my husband's sister. Now before i start I just want to explain that I do like her but she's a complete nightmare and will regularly make plans and then bail, she says one things but does another, she is the most unorganised person ever and she has been known to stretch the truth on many occasions, never the less, my kids love her.
So a few months back she asked if she could take our 12yo Ds and 10yo Dd on holiday to South Wales for the first week of the summer holidays for four days (they've already broken up here) along with her three daughters who are of similar age to our kids as well as her friend and son too. I said yes this was fine as long as she didn't mind and our kids have been really looking forward to it.
They're due to go on Monday so I've text SiL yesterday to finalise everything, ie how much money they need to take, what clothes etc they need, and then she text me back last night saying that she doesn't think that they'll be able to go now!
I text her back asking why and she said that the hire car she was supposed to be renting she now can't have. She doesn't have her own car you see so she was going to hire one to take some of the kids, and her friend and then her mum (my MiL) had agreed to drive the rest of the kids down and then come back home and then pick them up again on the Friday, so everything was so called arranged.
But for the last few days I had a feeling that something would go wrong (it usually does with my SiL) and then comes the text from her. So I ask, why can't she have the car and she says that they won't let her hire it because she has six points on her licence! Now bearing in mind they go away in five days so it's kind of last minute (typical of SiL though) so you'd of thought that she would have already sorted the car out but no. Something didn't feel right as I've hired a car before with six points on my licence (speeding) and they never said it was a problem. So I sneakily asked her which company she was hiring it from and I phoned them, and guess what...? They told me that any person can hire a car from them if they have under 9 points on their licence, so she has blatently lied to me.
It took a while for the penny to drop and I asked myself why would she lie about something like that but then it dawned on me. You see me and Dh have a car each, we have to as I need one to take the kids to school and him for work etc. Anyhow she is always asking for lifts, asking us to "do her favours" asking can we squeeze one of her kids in etc etc and then it dawned on me, she either wanted my Dh to drive her to South Wales and back OR to borrow his car! She knew that Dh had booked off a long weekend from work and this is the only time this year we are going to get to enjoy some alone time, so she must of thought that he wouldn't need his car, so i genuinely feel that this was the plan all along and there was no rental car in the first place.
Now you see for some people they'd just lend her their car and it wouldn't be an issue especially if she's taking their kids on holiday but she has had four crashes in the last five or six years including totalling their older brother's car last year meaning it had to be written off so there's no way Dh would allow her to drive his car. And for him to drive there and back in one day would take 9 hours and then the same on the Friday, there's just no way he's doing that.
She didn't actually come out and ask to borrow our car but she was hinting at it ie "oh I'll just have to get the train there but it'll cost me over £300 for everyone so it'll mean the kids can't have as much on holiday now" "oh I'll find a car from somewhere" etc etc. By now I knew she had lied to me so I just said, oh I've spoken to my Dh and he said that you can hire a car from X as long as you have under 9 points on your licence and instead of defending herself (as she always does if she thinks she's right) she just said, oh ok I'll get sorted.
This was last night but I woke to a text this morning saying she's found another company that would hire her a car, but basically she told me and her kids told my kids over Facebook that they couldn't go, and she got them all upset for nothing. Too and bottom of it is she didn't want to shell out a few hundred quid on a hire car and expected a free lift off Dh even thought she knew this weekend was the first we'd had together in two years OR she wanted his car. Now if she had asked outright could she borrow it we'd of still said no but at least she'd of been honest and not lied. And before anyone calls me ungrateful as she's taking my kids away after all, I am actually very grateful, but I'm sick to death of nothing going to plan with her, sick of her dramas and sick of her lying. So tell me please, AIBU?