Am I the only one that loves beach vacation with my ILs?

[Anonymous]

Am I alone in loving the extended-family beach vacation? We spend 2 weeks at the beach with MIL every summer and extended family across multiple houses. There is always some drama, a little irritation around the middle of week two, etc., but we look forward to it every year. Most nights are dinner for 25/30 rotating across the houses but I truly love the whole extended family even with the crazy thrown in.

My kids (6 and 9) look forward to it all year, it is more important to them than Christmas. This is the only time they see some of their cousins some years. In years past I have actually stayed longer than DH when he had to go back to DC for work for part of the two weeks but I chose to stay at the beach with the kids and MIL.

Now if this were FIL and his wife, two weeks at the beach would be all kinds of painful. Knowing that makes me appreciate this more.

[Anonymous]

That sounds awesome, OP! You are very lucky.

[Anonymous]

A lot of my friends do this with their families. It sounds like so much fun! I'm not a jealous person, but I really wish that I had a big family we could do this with.

[Anonymous]

Based on the few responses thus far, I would say yes. LOL. Just be happy you have a healthy relationship with your family. I am jealous.

[Anonymous]

I couldn't last that long with my in-laws, but know some people who could (my SIL being one of them). Some of you lucked out with great in-laws, some of us.... not so much

[Anonymous]

We have a great family vacation on my step-dad's side. It's about 30 of us - 6 brothers, 6 wives, the grandkids, two great-grandkids, the grandparents, and sometimes great aunts. However, it's a huge house (6 master bedroom suites with their own bathrooms, pool, hot tub, tons of decks, etc.) and they have a brilliant system. Everyone pretty much does their own thing during the day. Each family takes dinner and clean up one night during the week and puts about $40 in a pot for breakfast and lunch food. We all bring our own booze.

My kids (the great-grandkids) love it and I love the adult to kid ratio of 10-1. It helps that the whole family loves little kids.

[Anonymous]

We do a somewhat scaled down version of this too. Actually prefer having my inlaws join us rather than my own family ...

[Anonymous]

My own family isn't close and seldom included us on family vacations. My husband's family are much warmer and close-knit. I used to love going on beach vacations with them when our kids were little.

[Anonymous]

OP here - I have a good relationship with my own family but this is not the kind of thing we did regularly. A couple of times we had shortish family reunions on my dad's side and they were fun, but I grew up a few states away from where my parents grew up so I simply did not know my own cousins very well. I also grew up on the west coast by the beach so beach vacations were not something we did.

DH in some ways takes it for granted, this is definitely somethings that was started decades ago by his grandparents who have now passed away. My MIL and her siblings all adored their parents and have kept it going which is wonderful for my kids and their generation within the family.

[Anonymous]

Most of my in-laws are awesome, easy going, participatory, contributing people. Haven't had many opportunities to travel/vacation with them, but it's always fun and relaxed.

Except for my brother and his wife. Debbie downers, complainers, totally unhelpful.

But mostly? This kind of thing sounds like a great time!

[Anonymous]

We never did beach vacations, but did do other trips. My mil was a LOVELY lady and I did enjoy her company very much. My fil was handful, but sort of amusingly so. Both my inlaws tried very hard to accommodate me ( we are of different cultures). Wish they were still here!

[Anonymous]

That "across multiple houses" bit is useful. With enough space to have a little privacy here and there and generally good-natured people, I could see how it would be great!

[Anonymous]

You are not the only one! We do an annual vacation with ILs and DH's sibling's family and I always look forward to it. DCs love it because their cousins close in age, and I love it because (a) the beach (b) everyone helps with childcare for everyone's kids so it becomes a big communal fun thing.

It does help that we stay in different apartments in the same house or housing complex so everyone gets 'me' time and nobody expects you to be with the group every hour of every day - if you want to have a few hours to yourself, nobody cares.

[Anonymous]

I think you hit the nail on the head with the point that you can do this with family/people you like. We do this with my sister and her family, and my parents. There is no way I could do this with my in-laws. And I would never agree to it either.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That "across multiple houses" bit is useful. With enough space to have a little privacy here and there and generally good-natured people, I could see how it would be great!

My family has used this rationale for never renting one of the big awesome posh houses. We do a beach week or 5 days every year. Its a BIG family so the numbers vary year to year and would probably need 2 of those big houses.

We essentially rent out a floor of a beach hotel every year- by now we've known the owners since I was little! I always envied my friends who were from sort of more sophisticated families who did the big OBX rentals and stuff while we were in a beach similar to Ocean City, MD. But I will say that maybe its the space that we have that has allowed this vacation to happen over the course of decades now in some way or another without any incident.

FWIW my DH has seemed to really take to them over the 4-5 years he's been around. He needs more alone time than I do and he just sort of takes it when he wants to and no one cares- so many different personalities and needs that people do a lot of their own thing when they need to because we hang out most of the time anyway, so they can always meet up later.