Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am sorry OP. I can completely see how this must hurt.

When you brought up not hosting Thanksgiving did you follow immediately with other options ("perhaps one of you will host all of us this year?" or "shall we go to a restaurant instead?") or did you just discuss your decision to not host? Unless you followed with other possible options for your sons and their families this Thanksgiving you inadvertently "broke the pattern" and allowed all other options to now be on the table.

This. I think your sons and their families took what you said and came up with alternate plans so you wouldn’t have to host. My in laws always hosted Thanksgiving. If MIL said she didn’t want to host anymore, I would take that as an opportunity to do something different with just my immediate family, especially when my kids were young! It’s a lot of work (as you know) and if your grandkids are very young, and your sons and DILS work full time, it might be too much for them to take on.

I feel like travelling is more of a PITA than hosting Thanksgiving for 6-10 people. We have now hosted 2 very low-key Thanksgivings. We don’t make as many dishes as my grandmother and her sisters made for our 40 person extended family Thanksgiving of years gone by, but it’s plenty for 8-10 people. My DH is an extremely good project manager and turns those skills onto getting the timing right for the various dishes. When we travel for the big Thanksgiving reunion I tend to find it more exhausting. But that one is now fully catered.

I agree with this, IF you just have to host Thanksgiving dinner (or even the whole day). I find it completely overwhelming to host bc my relatives stay for a few days at my house and I have 2 small kids. By a few days, I mean 5. My mom is really old and unhealthy (and cranky) so we can't exactly kick her out after dinner, but boy is it exhausting/not fun for me.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am sorry OP. I can completely see how this must hurt.

When you brought up not hosting Thanksgiving did you follow immediately with other options ("perhaps one of you will host all of us this year?" or "shall we go to a restaurant instead?") or did you just discuss your decision to not host? Unless you followed with other possible options for your sons and their families this Thanksgiving you inadvertently "broke the pattern" and allowed all other options to now be on the table.

This. I think your sons and their families took what you said and came up with alternate plans so you wouldn’t have to host. My in laws always hosted Thanksgiving. If MIL said she didn’t want to host anymore, I would take that as an opportunity to do something different with just my immediate family, especially when my kids were young! It’s a lot of work (as you know) and if your grandkids are very young, and your sons and DILS work full time, it might be too much for them to take on.

I feel like travelling is more of a PITA than hosting Thanksgiving for 6-10 people. We have now hosted 2 very low-key Thanksgivings. We don’t make as many dishes as my grandmother and her sisters made for our 40 person extended family Thanksgiving of years gone by, but it’s plenty for 8-10 people. My DH is an extremely good project manager and turns those skills onto getting the timing right for the various dishes. When we travel for the big Thanksgiving reunion I tend to find it more exhausting. But that one is now fully catered.

Anonymous wrote:I am sorry OP. I can completely see how this must hurt.

When you brought up not hosting Thanksgiving did you follow immediately with other options ("perhaps one of you will host all of us this year?" or "shall we go to a restaurant instead?") or did you just discuss your decision to not host? Unless you followed with other possible options for your sons and their families this Thanksgiving you inadvertently "broke the pattern" and allowed all other options to now be on the table.

This. I think your sons and their families took what you said and came up with alternate plans so you wouldn’t have to host. My in laws always hosted Thanksgiving. If MIL said she didn’t want to host anymore, I would take that as an opportunity to do something different with just my immediate family, especially when my kids were young! It’s a lot of work (as you know) and if your grandkids are very young, and your sons and DILS work full time, it might be too much for them to take on.

Anonymous wrote:I think it is depressing to discuss thanksgiving in June.

OK?

Anonymous wrote:I think it is depressing to discuss thanksgiving in June.

If families need to travel, it makes sense to figure it out early. If everyone is local, then sure wait until November. Flights only get more expensive.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here, thank you, I’m taking in your great points. I think a year off might be a good thing, then I can hopefully regroup with them another holiday.

I think you blew it. They are going to love that vacation.

If the only thing keeping a family together is that they've never had permission to be anywhere else, that's not love.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well, now you blew it. New Thanksgiving tradition of everyone doing what they want. Enjoy your no work but lonely Thanksgiving.

NP and do you realize you’re talking to every mother of adult children? Any mom who has hosted tons should be able to say, I’m tired. And a son should step up and host for once. Even if that means heating up food from Wegmans or arranging a restaurant and everyone pays their own way. At the very least, there should have been more discussion. To leave it with “we’ll figure it out” and then to pull a fast one that leaves your frequent hosts out in the cold isn’t fair.

This is very dependent on the ages/health/capability of all of the parties in question.

A empty nest healthy retired couple in their early 60s expecting their adult children with busy jobs and young kids to host them for thanksgiving because they’re “tired” and no longer feel like hosting comes across as selfish and tone deaf.

However if the grandparents are elderly or have health issues and are actually no longer positioned to step up to host then obviously just abandoning them at that point to make other plans is cruel.

From OP’s posts it sounds like she is in the first category.

This. Are the parents of young children not tired? If retirees overextend and get tired they can rest as much as they like. Is OP under the impression that because she was a SAHM, her DILs should be too?

At least 1 DIL offered to host at some point. Plenty of parents with kids host their own Thanksgiving.

Yes, and OP turned down DIL and kept playing Perpetual Hostess for multiple years after. Even if it’s true she had CA guests that year, she should have made a point to say, “But that said, I would absolutely love to visit your home for Thanksgiving, and help in any way that would be helpful. Can we take you up on that next year?”

Seriously - so tired of the Boomers who won’t give up control until the last minute. AND also trying to control everyone else’s time off (beach week, which presumably they took time off work for) and Thanksgiving every year. I’m a similar DIL and I am going to be 60 before I get to host my own holiday in my own home at the rate things are going. Love my mother and MIL, but they both will not relinquish being hostess, even though they can barely handle it in their late 70s. I help out, when they allow it.

Totally. My oldest DC is 10 and this was the first year we have hosted my parents for a holiday- Easter. Otherwise it's either we go to my parents for ILs for holidays or celebrate at home by ourselves. They don't even really like hosting but are stuck in this idea that everyone needs to come "home" for the holidays or make some other excuse as to why they can't travel.

The best gift you can give your adult kids is to let them off the hook occasionally. The fact that they both had other plans lined up IMMEDIATELY means that they have been waiting for this.

It's ok. It's not the end of Thanksgiving forever. And now start planning your own holiday without your kids. Maybe with other empty nester friends? Maybe with a sibling you haven't seen while focusing on your own kids? Maybe go to a resort you've been wanting to check out. Make it your own!

I think it is depressing to discuss thanksgiving in June.

OP is just pretending to be nice. She is going to take this affront to her self-importance out if everyone else's hides anyway she can.

OK, I don’t know why people are still piling on after OP acknowledged that she was taking in the great advice and planning to do her own thing this year with DH, and hoping to make other plans with family next year.

That is a rare thing on DCUM for an OP to not only actually take in advice, but to come back and update instead of disappearing after people come out against her.

Boomer wannabe matriarchs are the worst. Self-centered and whiny.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So you as an empty nester don’t have the energy or bandwidth to organize/host a Thanksgiving meal but are salty that your sons and DILs with young children, who presumably have far more demands on them, similarly don’t want to do so?

And you just said they whole family was at your beach house. So that is enough for 2026. How many holidays do you want the whole family together? You got the one this year.

+1 Young families are really, REALLY pressed on time, and families are scattered. I don’t think older people realize the extent of this. Now they get to show up for a member of the wife’s extended family and the kids get to meet some of that side of the family, maybe for the first time or the first time in years - and your other son and his family get to go on an actual vacation, just them. You’ve given them the gift of time, AND they also spent the week with you at your beach house just now.

NP. I’m laughing at all the posts saying that OP “didn’t make her intentions clear” that she wanted these busy young families to continue to spend thanksgiving with OP but that they should do the hosting. Of course that’s crystal clear to everyone already. What’s not clear to the OP is that everyone wants to do other things like see the other side of the family or spend time as a family unit and that they’ve only been indulging OP all this time because she goes to all this effort to host. She doesn’t get that they have their own lives and want to spend time doing other things with other people.

If you want to see the grandkids then you need to offer to babysit them - either handing them at your place without parents or going to their homes to help with babysitting periodically. Actually be helpful to them. You can’t have a monopoly on their leave time and family time anymore.