if you extended family / inlaws are travel distance away - how do you use your vacation time?

[Anonymous]

All family is a 3/4 day of travel away flying. My inlaws are giving us a hard time that we "only" go visit them once a year despite our traveling "so much". I can vaguely see why they feel like we travel "so much" in that we do 3 day weekends at places like 2 hours away, but thats obviously not a time we could go visit them instead. So our break down ends up being roughly

- 1 wk with inlaws
- 1 wk with my parents
- 4-5 days with some other extended family or close friend (my sister, visiting friends from dh and mys grad school)
- 1 wk vacation to someplace that isn't just someone else's house
- 2 or 3 long weekends that are short driving distance

We have 3 little kids (3, 5, 7yos) so its all an ordeal but worth it to me to see family and friends, get out in nature for long weekends (we live in the city), experience a new place on occasion.

I'm just curious how others divide up their time. We are lucky in that both my inlaws and my parents live in lovely places to visit - but once a year is all the vacation time I want to spend on it. They all still travel extensively and retired so they're all perfectly capable of coming to us.

[Anonymous]

We never did one week at each. We’d travel across country about every other year. We’d spend several days with them but then do our own vacation thing. We did one destination wedding at a resort location for 10 days. All other trips were nuclear family only. It’s worked out really well. We have fantastic memories of our fun family vacations.

[Anonymous]

If they complain tell them that they’re free to visit you and then change the topic.

[Anonymous]

When our kids were young our schedule was like yours. Thankfully no one gave us grief about it. We only had three weeks of vacation so what more could we do? Tell your ILs that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We never did one week at each. We’d travel across country about every other year. We’d spend several days with them but then do our own vacation thing. We did one destination wedding at a resort location for 10 days. All other trips were nuclear family only. It’s worked out really well. We have fantastic memories of our fun family vacations.

Same

One side vacations so we’d do it together.

Other side never vacations or spends their money so visit us every year and sit around, and we visit them every other year as a family of 5.

Once the kids got older than age 5 and 7 staying one week in their house got boring and tedious for all. Depends on the families.
So now we stay with them 5 days and explore a stop over city for 4 days (only our family of 5). Those grandparents are difficult to travel or bring on even day trips venturing out. They don’t tip, they alter their behavior, they don’t understand what’s going on, they are super stingy with their pocketbook, they never say thank you or talk much.

[Anonymous]

That’s a lot of traveling each year to visit family. Most people don’t do that much. You are going above and beyond already.

Do they visit you? Or do they expect you to come to them?

I would block the info. Don’t tell them when you go somewhere. Block them on social media posts where you are posting about travel.

[Anonymous]

Out of state and out of country grandparents here.

We’d do Thanksgiving at a vacation destination with my parents and my siblings families. Worked out for years until kid sports interceded in late middle school.

We’d also meet up one week at summer beach hour with my side.

We’d take our own spring break or summer trip.

The foreign in laws visit us every year, except Covid years. We visit them every other year, although that’s getting difficult to get away. We’d do a mix, half with them, half in our own exploring.

My spouse visits them 1-2x a year solo. Usually plans a work trip and see them on the weekend each end.

[Anonymous]

Well, my brother and his family just stopped visiting altogether. It's very sad. You are making a real effort with three littles.

[Anonymous]

And do various 3/4 day weekends by ourselves or with friends

[Anonymous]

You are already doing a ton, and with very young kids. We have 2 MS kids and we’ve dropped the rope with traveling to parents. They are on the young side, in good health, retired and travel a ton themselves, so they know that they need to come here to see us. We really value our vacation time as a nuclear family, everyone is so busy that it’s our time to decompress as a family, and draining our vacation days and money to regularly travel to visit family isn’t really feasible. We have gone on occasion for an event, but it is not a regular yearly thing. We will handle it differently when we get to the point that travel is difficult for them, but for now they come to us and they have totally understood why in this phase of life that is the choice we have made.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When our kids were young our schedule was like yours. Thankfully no one gave us grief about it. We only had three weeks of vacation so what more could we do? Tell your ILs that.

We did similarly when our were young, and then sports got in the way. My in-laws come to visit more, and my mom will every now and then point that out if she wants us to visit them and not my in-laws (for example my mom is asking for Thanksgiving and Christmas this year b/c my in-laws have visited us 3 times this year) and I have to remind her that coming here is open to everyone and I’m not going to short change my in-laws a holiday visit because they come more often than my parents do.

[Anonymous]

Hell, I grew up in NY with grandparents in Florida and we went to visit them once in my entire childhood. And we didn't even stay with them. They came to NY once a year.

Do what works for you and don't take any crap about it.

[Anonymous]

When our kids were young, we did similar. A week with each set of parents is a lot, esp with 3 kids. If they want more time, they should come visit you!

FWIW, as the kids got older, we traveled to ger to more fun places as a family (Costa Rica, Iceland, Europe). You can also invite grandparents on some trips - Alaskan Cruise is perfect for multi-generational trips

[Anonymous]

We usually do 1 week with each family (but in laws prefer to meet us somewhere fun for vacation). When our kids were younger we often didn’t even do an individual family vacation other than a weekend at the beach.

[Anonymous]

We live about a 4 hour flight from each set of parents. (Plus a long drive from the airport, for my in-laws.)

Generally go to see my husband's family for one week at Christmas. We spend a week with my family over the summer (usually we travel somewhere with them). I usually fly back to see my family another 1-2 times during the year. (We work remotely; it's not really easy to work from their place but it's possible.)

I don't get a lot of vacation so that's usually about that for vacation. We try to get in 1-2 long weekends somewhere driving distance, too.

Our parents usually come visit us once a year, too. They are all older - and now have mobility issues on both sides.

It's ok for us to prioritize seeing them in our vacation time, I think. I would love to go take some real vacations but I don't get a lot of vacation time and we're not swimming in extra travel $ right now. So that's just going to be an occasional thing in this stage of life.

The alternative, realistically, is that we move closer to one set of parents - and so we don't need to schedule seeing them like this; then we'd get to go on more vacations. We've talked about that, but we really like where we live.