Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A number of people have proposed switching off every other year -- it's not clear to me why that's not a viable compromise?

OP here. It's kind of turned into a tradition. We started it when our youngest was a baby. At the time, we figured, hey we rented this huge house for the three of us, might as well invite some other people to fill it. It's not like the cost would change either way for us. Then it kind of steam rolled and now this is the seventh year we'll all go down together. It's hard to suggest altering it in any significant way now. And they all look forward to it (except from my SIL probably. We've never talked about it but I get an eye rolly feeling from her wrt the OBX trip, lol). Either we change locations and they come with us or we just stop. But that will be awkward too and require some kind of explanation. It probably would hurt their feelings, which I don't want to do. I guess I'll just try to convince DH to spend more on a house in a northern beach next year.

I'm with you, OP. I don't see the sense in going *south* during the hottest part of summer! Who in their right mind does that??!!

Do your kids like it? Are there going to be any cousins? My family only really had a tradition at Christmas, and it wasn't much. I wished we had more memories of places we had been to more than once. This year DH and I are joining his cousins at a beach house near where they used to go to as kids and he is SO excited about showing me all the places they used to go. Favorite ice cream places, boardwalk where they would get fries etc. I never had that and want that for our kids, so we plan to make it a tradition for us again. If your kids love the time with their family, maybe keep it up just for them.

That said, if you're sick of all the time with the ILs, can DH take the kids by himself (with help from ILs) while you join a few days later, maybe after a weekend with some girlfriends? Or you could go to a spa to get some alone time? If you see your ILs all the time at home, I can certainly understand why you'ld be sick of them. But I assume the siblings live elsewhere, right? Or are they local too?

Pp here. You can just announce that the annual beach vacation will be in MV this year, but due to the rental market, the rooms will be allocated as follows: blah blah.

OP-- If your DH is open to a new location but wants to include his family, then I would pay for his parents but not the sibs. Looks like they don't have kids so the married bro gets a room and the single bro can sleep on the couch. You would still pay more since it sounds like you have kids and need more rooms. Or have single bro share with kids.

Anonymous wrote:But the problem isn't that they don't have enough time as a nuclear family to connect. They have three or four OTHER weeks plus long weekends to connect as a nuclear family unit on vacation, which is more than most other people have even without that extra week at OBX. The problem seems to be that the wife just doesn't want to vacation with her in laws anymore and her husband does, so the wife would like to go to a more chi chi location in order to price out her in laws. But without hurting their feelings!!! It seems like a really privileged perspective to me.

+1 The OP should probably just suck it up and leave everything status quo. Since she does take other nice vacations including long skiing weekends with her nuclear family, it would probably seem really selfish to her DH if she tries to exclude the extended family for the annual 4th of July OBX vacation.

FWIW, plenty of people take vacations in those large rentals with just their nuclear family and don't worry about trying to fill it up with other family members.

Anonymous wrote:What do his brothers do? Is your DH the oldest? I can't believe they have let your DH door the bill for the house rental all these years unless you guys are significantly richer than they are.

We probably make five or six times what they do. And, like I said before, the houses are so big there (we like Duck and Corolla). It's hard to find one that can't accommodate ten or eleven people if not more. So it's not like the cost changes for us, whether they come or not. It would be different if we looked for a rental on MV or Nantucket though, I'm sure.

Plus the youngest brother is used to being the baby. I don't think he has ever even considered the possibility that he should offer to chip in. He has actually invited his own guests before, lol.

What do his brothers do? Is your DH the oldest? I can't believe they have let your DH door the bill for the house rental all these years unless you guys are significantly richer than they are.