TL:Dr My sister in law constantly cancels, is late, or just changes plans not even last minute but often an hour or so after they were supposed to arrive. AIBU for being completely sick of this?
My sister in law has a son and so do I and the two boys get on great (mostly). They're about the same age and both only children so really act like siblings a lot of the time. My son in particular loves their son and gets very very excited when we make plans together. BUT I have actually stopped telling my son when we have plans with them up until the point we are actually doing the activity. So if we are planning to have them over to our house I will not tell him until they are literally in our house, because of the way my sister in law acts. Say we have plans for 12 noon: I'll get a message saying "just getting ready" at 12 noon. Right ok. So it's going to be another 40 mins at least until you get here, but you're still in the process of getting ready. So I'll be waiting a full hour for them, unable to go and do something else with the day, and I'll get a message "sorry we can't do today Hun DS doesn't really feel like it". And then everyone else has plans already so we just have to stay at home and if I had told my son he would be disappointed but I've learned not to bother (mostly).
We were going to the zoo the other day. They have hour time slots and we said to them "what time are you leaving?". They said about 20 mins after us because they live closer. Ok no problem. There's no signal all the way there so when we get there I get a message "just leaving". I think oh that must be from a while ago because of lack of signal. No it wasn't they were just leaving. An hour late. They only just made it in time for their time slot and kept us waiting in the zoo for an hour. We had already had lunch and they then decided to get lunch so we had to wait again for them. Then they decide to put on suncream, with zero haste. I said to them "we'll just pop over there to the monkeys while we wait" thinking maybe if we get up and go they'll realise this is ridiculous. Nope. They sat there and chatted for ages. I had to send my son over to say basically are you coming or not?
Right now we've got plans to go out. We were supposed to leave at 12 ish. The journey will take 40 mins. She messaged at 11.20 saying she was getting ready. She messages again at noon saying her and her husband had a bit of an argument and she's still getting ready. If this was a one off it would be ok fair enough, but it's just neverending. To the point where I said to my husband what had happened (he's away) and he said "like clockwork".
What do I do? Am I the asshole for being completely sick of this bullshit? I've been waiting for coming up to two hours for them now. I made the mistake of telling my son so he's going to be disappointed if he doesn't get to see them. Part of me wants to just drive off, go to the place we're going, and not tell them, but then I really would be the asshole. I've had arguments with her in the past when I wasn't completely in the right but I feel like on this I am in the right. But I don't want to ruin the friendship between the boys because I brought up how sick of it am, on the other hand my son is seeing me set an example of "let yourself be walked over". Any ideas?!