Anonymous wrote:Behold your future- will these very same messages be posted by your children in 20/30 years?

What goes around comes around.

If our kids our self supportive, happy, productive grown ups with families of their own (grandkids for us!!)....I will feel very blessed actually. And I will hope that they'll want to spend some time with us just as we want to spend time with their grandparents.

We've certainly set a good example for them! We'll see....

Behold your future- will these very same messages be posted by your children in 20/30 years?

What goes around comes around.

SIL forced BIL moved his family to Florida to get away from our overbearing MIL.

MIL thinks they all moved to Florida for a better job opportunity...

On the one hand, yes I'm glad we're far away. On the other hand, DH wants to visit family a lot so we end up spending a lot of vaction time with family. If we lived closer to family, we could spend more vacation time elswhere. Pros and cons to both, I guess.

No. It's easier to live close because you pop by for visits whenever you need to. If you move far away you wind up doing week long visits - them to see you, you to see them - 2/3/4 times a year. Add in BOTH sides of your family and that's a lot of weeks!

Yes. The space the find our own rhythms as a family, establish our own traditions without anyone breathing down our necks, what a godsend. When my husband and I met, we lived in a really remote place than made going back to our families prohibitively expensive for the holidays. We started our lived together there and it was so nice to not have the weight of family on us. We've since moved back to what we jokingly call civilizations, but still have anywhere from 3-8 hour drive between us and family members.

To this day, we rarely spend holidays with family. We find other times to visit and have them visit us--times that don't come weighed down with absurd expectations.

Years ago this post would have made me sad.

After hosting Thanksgiving this year, I was so happy to send my certifiably CRAZY, selfish, narcissistic mother packing back home and the beauty that is "I've been really busy at work, let's catch up soon."

SO YES. I feel you. ALL THE YESES.

I also bless whoever invented caller ID. Not only don't I have to be there, I don't have to answer when I know they're calling.

I haven't been home in 20 years and have no plans to ever go back.

lol yep!!!

We are moving this spring and this is one thing I'm most excited about. Getting away from their particular brand of crazy will be a gift!!!

Yes. Oh, hell yes. I don't go for more than two nights unless someone is in the hospital or has died.

Every time i go back, I think "3 days will be plenty."

And every time I am dying to leave after two.

Every time I go home for Thanksgiving (I've been away 30 years) ... I am relieved I don't live in the same city as my family. While I missed having them around when my child grew up, I am pleased I didn't have to deal w/ the family dramas over the years.