Woman decides she is not hosting this year's family 4th of July party after her sister turned up 3 hours late with 8 uninvited guests last year: 'I had to rebuy food twice to cover everyone'

I think whoever settled on a "picnic" as an example probably had never planned a picnic before, and only attended picnics that other people had planned.

With any event, there's no end to the planning and organizing. The careful consideration of everyone's allergies, dietary needs, coaching over what subjects to avoid and who, especially, to avoid them with. There's a house to clean, a yard to maintain so the kids can play outside (weather permitting), and you have to make sure you set up the pingpong table out in the garage so the teens and young adults have somewhere dark and brooding to retreat to away from the rest of the family. 

And the cleaning? All that panicked cleaning as if your guests were going to inspect every square inch of your home and judge your entire life and existence if a single thing is out of place. Actually, scratch that last bit… a lot of us probably do have in-laws or parents who would do exactly that. 

From there, there are the groceries that have to be fetched, and all the cooking and baking that has to be done. And the event hasn't even started yet…

All the planning helps, but doesn't automatically solve the execution of the event. Really, a host doesn't get to relax until the event is over.

It's no surprise that as pressures mount in other areas of our lives and things get harder at work and with our bank accounts, that extra energy that we used to pour into making these events happen just doesn't seem worth it anymore. 

I think that in a lot of instances we would normally give family the benefit of the doubt, but for this host, her sister's actions last year at her previous 4th of July gathering, and the extra strain it put on her and the event, left her feeling like the prospect of hosting another event was just too much. 

This is absolutely fair on her part. The only thing left to wonder is just why in the heck she let her sister and 8 uninvited guests in the door in the first place last year. They would have been turned away at the door.