Too many cooks in the kitchen

While all of Saskatchewan huddled together with hot cocoa under fleece blankets over Christmas, I got to sip chilled wine on the patio amid cacti and desert heat. Not hot, hot heat mind you, but warm enough to wear bare legs outside. Our family has become so anti-traditional that it didn't even seem odd or amiss to be surrounded by nativity scenes displayed proudly in rock gardens; Santa and his reindeer making their way effortlessly over barren rooftops and dry decks. Strange. No white Christmas. No rosy cheeks, save those procured from one glass too many.
And it was there, in the beautiful kitchen of my mother's new home in a gated retirement community just outside of Phoenix that it became painfully obvious, there are far too many cooks in the kitchen. We are a family of cooks. Mom and Mark and I all fighting for head chef status, so unwilling and incapable of compromise. Fortunately maturity has tamed the insults and quelled the offense. in fact we even found it in ourselves to have a very lovely time.
Tonight, returning home to the frigid tundra I find myself deeply melancholy yet again. Only 2 weeks and 6 days until i get on a plane again. This time the destination will be so mysterious, the circumstances so out of my control, all my little cooks so far behind me. What am
I going to do without all my little cooks?