Anonymous wrote:My husband has been insistent since we got married that he stay over at his parents house for a few days at Thanksgiving.

We do not have children yet.

I feel like...what about our own traditions?

I mildly felt this way until we had babies. Now I am so happy for the help and the break, and will put off setting up family traditions in our own house as long as I possibly can (ideally until they become old enough to remember).

Anonymous wrote:My husband has been insistent since we got married that he stay over at his parents house for a few days at Thanksgiving.

We do not have children yet.

I feel like...what about our own traditions?

We're no longer invited at stay at my in laws after MIL walked in on my husband & I enjoying a 'quickie', with me bent over their couch. Husband apparently had his eyes closed as I tried to push back to free myself to grab something to coverup. His mother froze as I turned bright red. His mother called his name, and only then did he realize "we were in trouble". Made for an interesting stay the rest of the weekend and many side jokes 'stuffing'.

Nope. They have two twin beds in two guest bedrooms. Same mattresses my 45 year old DH grew up on. Twin beds were tough when my kids were small and wanted to snuggle in bed together. They won’t upgrade one set of beds to a queen or king—I guess they think their 3 married sons are all virgins. FIL keeps Fox News blaring from 5 am to midnight. The constant noise makes me crazy (I have to talk directly into my kids’ ears for them to hear me) plus…it’s Fox. We stay in a hotel, and believe me, hotels are hard to come by in that part of the country.

Pre kids we always stayed by them or my parents for holidays. Once we had kids we stopped traveling for holidays, but both sides are always welcome. His parents have never come for one holiday at ours, so we don’t see them on holidays now.

We use to live an hour from my IL’s so we would often spend a night there. They have a big house and a big yard and we had neither. Now we live 30 minutes away and I’m not sure what we will do except my kids love staying there. It helps that I really like them.

Anonymous wrote:My husband has been insistent since we got married that he stay over at his parents house for a few days at Thanksgiving.

We do not have children yet.

I feel like...what about our own traditions?

Your traditions? How about the value of extended family? This can be a nice tradition. This can set the tone for the future, how involved do you want them to be as grandparents? Relationship are a two way street.

Anonymous wrote:My husband has been insistent since we got married that he stay over at his parents house for a few days at Thanksgiving.

We do not have children yet.

I feel like...what about our own traditions?

Just him? You don’t go with him?

Anonymous wrote:Yes, but it’s in a rotation. It’s in the mix, on both sides. We sometimes have people stay with us, we sometimes stay with parents or siblings, but it’s a mix. We all share in the experience of traveling/being a guest (or being a host).

My parents are traveling to us this Christmas, but we traveled to them last Thanksgiving. It’s a mix. We would never agree to ALWAYS travel. And sometimes, when it suits us, we stay in a hotel instead of with family, especially as my ILs’ house is tiny and only has two bathrooms.

You’re lucky. We have lived here now for 7 years with kids and my in laws have only come out for 1 Thanksgiving. My mom has not come out for a Holiday. We are expected to go to them with young kids. We started not going anywhere for Christmas a couple years ago because Christmas at both was just too much (my SIL and BiL refused to do anything with this side in 12/24 or 12/25 even if we asked for once every 3 years).

It is hard because people are getting older and won’t be able to travel as much so it’s annoying that people didn’t at least try and travel to us while they had better mobility and had less health issues. My spouse also travels a lot for work during fall and winter so they don’t want to be traveling a ton over the holidays.

It’s really important to get on the same page about this stuff early in your marriage. DH and I agreed from the beginning we’ll do one holiday just our immediate family unit, one with his family and one with mine. But either of us can choose how to spend the holiday with our family, meaning it’s fine to stay home.
I agree with the PP who suggested you two go travel and relax before you welcome children.

Also I never ever stay with anyone in their home. I need a lot of alone time and I hate being a house guest.

My lovely ILs come to our house for a week. We shop and cook together. Also, we buy desserts from Costco and jazz it up a bit. An aunt (MIL's sister), a few relatives and friends join us too, and also bring dishes.

My ILs always present us with one complimentary whole house cleaning after they leave. They use the cleaner who works in her sister's house. It is lovely end to TG hosting.

This really depends upon whether you like your parents/inlaws or not, and whether you value extended family relationships or not. My extended family is tiny and not that close, and my husband's is enormous and close. It was hard for me to get used to at first but we have now been married 20 years and I am so thankful my own children have grown up this way. They are incredibly close to so many of their relatives, particularly cousins of varying ages and that is really only achieved by visits, visits, visits. Now that my kids are teens I feel they have all these great role models and people other than their parents they can confide in and learn about the world from. One of their older cousins recently got married to a man who just exemplifies a great life partner, and he's amazing to my kids and they adore him right back. So much of this I feel is very hard to "teach" and is best just learned through experience and example.

Okay, stepping off my soapboax.

They live far away, so when we visit, of course we spend the nights there (and I find them challenging). But it's only fair for parents to want to spend time with their children, and grandchildren. When they visit us, they spend the night with us as well

We also spend at least one night with my ILs at Thanksgiving. But that didn’t start until my parents passed (25 years ago) and there have been a few times where due to issues of our SN child that we went home because it was too hard on our kid.

Anonymous wrote:Hmm. I stayed with inlaws like this until I was pregnant with our first. DH and I talked about it when we first got married. Being childless and young, we could sacrifice and travel like this at the start, then change course.

We did every year — either Thanksgiving or Christmas. We did not develop many of our own traditions yet my FIL is dead now, and I’m very glad we had the chance to see each other a few times a year.

Yes we do. We spend 2-3 nights. We have a lot of fun! We don't do fussy holidays and it's the best.