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[quote=Anonymous]I think the issue is less that her parents live in boring suburbia (I mean most of us do in fact live in boring suburbia!) and more that her parents are a tedious visit. The whole “sitting in the living room eating coffee cake and hearing gossip about people from 40 years ago” kind of thing. I’m also assuming they live in a colder weather kind of place, I’m assuming the exurbs of Chicago or Minneapolis or something, so getting out during Christmas can potentially be a chore and outdoor activity is maybe out of the question.

I’d just give the same advice I always say: stay in a hotel, breakfast and maybe hit the gym in the morning at the hotel if they have one, come to your parents house after breakfast - 10 am-ish, spend the day there, leave after dinner. Repeat for 3 days. Do you have any work to get caught up on? Any boring mandatory trainings to knock out before the end of the year? If so bring your work laptop and spend a few hours trying to get some work done if at all possible.

I don’t know how old your kids are but my kids like doing regular stuff in another area and just seeing what they have. They like the mall where my parents live just because it’s different than what we have. They like the trampoline park in the strip mall because it’s different. Their local restaurants, their used book store, their stores (Meijer especially!) etc. etc. Yes it’s all in typical strip malls but it’s different for kids. You could also try to find a hotel with an indoor pool and spend some time there too. Kids love that stuff.

My IL’s live in a lot smaller of a town than my parents so it’s more challenging, but even so - their town has a gigantic McDonalds with an indoor play room. There’s also a nice park and playground which we try to go to if it’s not 20 degrees out. Otherwise we just bring our streaming service logins and hope for the best. [/quote]

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