Does anyone have a weekend house?
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Anonymous
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This is a bit random since my kids are not teens yet, but wanted to get perspective from those with older children.
My parents want us and my sister to go in on a beach house with them. We all rented one together for the summer and had a really great time. My kids are currently 7 (DD) and 5 (DS) and my worry is that we missed the boat because pretty soon they won’t want to be away from friends on weekends, have sports and other activities, etc. My sisters kids are younger - 4 and 2. Does anyone on have a weekend house and are your kids still interested in going at an older age? If not, at what age did they stop wanting to be away from friends or did it become more challenging with activities and other things going on? Or, if you’ve had it forever maybe it’s a non-issue since they grew up going and look forward to it? Would love any thoughts! |
Anonymous
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We have a house on the Northern Neck that we share with my sister and her family. The key for us is proximity -- we can get there in 2.5-3 hours or so, which makes it close enough to go down to for just the day or even only overnight. Pretty much someone is down there every weekend.
We've had the house for about over 15 years, since the oldest children were 5 or so, and the oldest are now in college. Sometimes during the middle school / high school years, travel team sports schedules made it hard for a particular child to get there consistently but it all evened out. What we found was that in middle school and high school, our kids wanted to go to the River House and bring a friend with them for the weekend or for longer periods during the summer. It always is a lot of fun. Sometimes it is just one friend and sometimes it is more. Our place has a lot of toys and a large outdoors area but the house itself is pretty humble. That has not stopped our kids one bit from wanting people to come down. The older children talk a lot now about bringing their own kids when they have families. We have cleaners come in once a week and we have a lawn service. Both of those make a huge difference so we don't have to do any chores when we're there. I imagine that you'll get some feedback from some people who found the weekend house didn't work for them but it has been a wonderful place for us and we're glad we took the plunge! |
Anonymous
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We have a beach house that we go to for summer and frequently on weekends.
DS is 10. He plays sports but isn’t obsessed. He likes golf and we have a membership near our beach house. We frequently invite his friends and their families. I don’t get the whole travel sports scene. If he wants to do we will support him but not going to force him into it. |
Anonymous
| Basically ditto what the PP said. We have had ours for 13 years. Now the kids are all teens/tweens. They want to go there more now than ever. There was definitely a period when we weren't able to go as often but we just worked out the fall schedule. I will head down on Friday with the kid who has soccer on Sunday. My DH will come with the two kids who have games on Sat after their games on Sat and then I will head back on Sunday for the Sunday game. Everyone gets time and the family gets to be together. It is kind of nice that the kids want to be with us still. |
Anonymous
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My children are 8 and 10 and are begging us to buy a place so they can take turns bringing friends. We are not but we go visit my parent’s vacation beach home a couple of times per year. We are thinking we will start going to that more now that they are older and sometimes they can bring a friend. It’s difficult with sports but I like PP’s idea of taking them separately. DH and I don’t own but we like to take weekend trips with the kids to the Shenandoah to get away from life here. We rent different places and the kids still love it.
Personally, I would not be able to buy a place with my siblings. We are too different. |
Anonymous
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We have had one for 6 years about 3 hours away . We went all of the time up until last summer . The kids are 12 and 14 and it is really hard to find time around their schedules and their friends.
Even if we sell at a loss , it was worth having. |
Anonymous
| We had a lake house and sold it when the kids got heavily into sports. We later got a beach house which we definitely use but not a ton bc - again - sports. If your kids have a serious interest in sports, that’s what will be the problem. |
Anonymous
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I have 3 kids—14, 13, 11 and all play travel sports. We’ve owned a beach house for the past 3 summers and find that we use it for about 5-6 weeks in the summer (we telecommute) and for the 4th of July. We also stay there a few weekends in the winter. This year my kids had sports tournaments over Memorial Day but none of them had any this weekend (Labor Day) so we spent the weekend there.
Most of not all travel programs give the summers off—at least a good 4-6 week block of no practices. The issue is more that we can never go Sept-Oct and March-May. |
Anonymous
My kids are swimmers. It’s a year round sport (except for a few weeks in August). We have a vacation home but rarely use it. When we have off for blocks like that, we also want to travel. |
Anonymous
Can you share where/who you rent from in Shenandoah? Thank you. |
Anonymous
| We don’t have a weekend house, but just wanted to add that I would not let the consideration of sports interfering stop me from doing something I wanted to do. My kids love sports and in elem school played on every team, but now that they are middle/high school age neither plays travel and they have pared down to one sport per season and it is all very manageable. Most of their friends are in the same boat. Not every kid plays travel sports! |
Anonymous
| We have a beach house and for years we went every weekend. My oldest never got tired of it and never got involved with sports that interfered with going more than a few weekends a year. My younger two started getting tired of it around age 16 because they wanted to see friends instead. Also my youngest got I vacation over with travel sports and that really interfered. Even so we're not sorry we have it and we use it a lot. |
Anonymous
swimming is an exception. Travel baseball, soccer, lacrosse, volleyball, etc. all give long blocks of time off in the summer (if not the entire summer). We also travel internationally each year but do so over spring break. All the travel programs give one weekend off for spring break. |
Anonymous
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At 13 and 10, most of our weekends of the year are sports-filled. It is hard to find a weekend to travel the 2 hours to the mountain cabin that my husband's aunt owns.
The summer we like to go where it is much, much cooler. I don't like the mid-Atlantic beaches. We have friends that have a house at the Cape and they go a few weeks each summer, but have limited time to use it. Their kids are slightly older than mine. We have a 2nd home in the city and we decided not to sell it to buy a vacation home because it is rented year round and the mortgage is almost paid. We prefer to travel to new places. |
Anonymous
| Where are these beach houses? Asking since the outer banks is a haul to go for a weekend. |