Anonymous wrote:Rent your own place. Near them.
Grown-ups pay for their own vacations.
When you have your own place & pay all of your costs, you are free - you decide re: the schedule and how much togetherness.

OP here. This is my point, they do not care if DH is there or not. At all. Ever. They do not include him. They do not go to the beach together, or even sit together. What's the point?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You are an adult. It's your money.

Just say no.

+100

+100000.

Maybe have your spouse take the kids and you can have a lovely staycation by yourself.

Maybe they can all do a long weekend together while you stay home and that way your dh would still have enough leave and vacation budget left over to do something as a family just you, him & the kids.

My husband's side of the family rent big houses at the beach - aunt/uncles/cousins, each rental is near another big house with other related aunts/uncles/cousins.
Our nuclear family and ILs stay in separate condos. He's an only child, so it's pretty funny, we are the smallest family but stay separately. I insisted on it. We do it this way, or we don't go. MIL was a bit embarrassed I think in front of the rest of her family that we didn't all stay together under the same roof, Oh, well. This is what works. And everyone (eventually) adjusted just fine.

Rent your own place. Near them.
Grown-ups pay for their own vacations.
When you have your own place & pay all of your costs, you are free - you decide re: the schedule and how much togetherness.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You are an adult. It's your money.

Just say no.

+100

+100000.

Maybe have your spouse take the kids and you can have a lovely staycation by yourself.

Anonymous wrote:You are an adult. It's your money.

Just say no.

+100

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would never make that mistake more than once.

This. After the first one I told my husband that it was not a vacation and going forward we would have a nuclear family vacation only if we could only do one vacation a year.

Same here. Once was enough and I, too, told DH that it wasn't a vacation and I wasn't doing it again.

16:29. Did I say it doesn't count as a vacation?

Also terrible was that MIL would be in charge of finding a rental and would wait far too long and then try to score a bargain. We stayed in some truly rotten beach houses. We did maybe three trips like this and then had to bow out.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would never make that mistake more than once.

This. After the first one I told my husband that it was not a vacation and going forward we would have a nuclear family vacation only if we could only do one vacation a year.

Waiting on my ILs in a rented lake house is so not a vacation.

Amen, sister.

Doesn't count as a vacation.

We used to do this years ago...rent a big OBX house with ILs, DH aunt and uncle and cousins and their kids oh...and elderly great grand parents. It was about as stultifyingly boring as it seems. Try getting twenty people ages newborn to 85 out the door to do anything.

Too many people, sensory overload and too many adults trying to assert control over the schedule, too many people planning and someone always insisting that we need to agree and do activities en masse.

This does not count as a vacation.

Anonymous wrote:I would never make that mistake more than once.

This. After the first one I told my husband that it was not a vacation and going forward we would have a nuclear family vacation only if we could only do one vacation a year.

Waiting on my ILs in a rented lake house is so not a vacation.

I would never make that mistake more than once.

Do vacations away from them?
Drink a lot?
When our kids were really little, almost every vacation was with family. We stopped doing that. Much better to go somewhere as a family without ILs .

You are an adult. It's your money.

Just say no.

And they are not nice people, how do you cope?