It is their daughter. Let her handle the fallout. Just say, we wanted to have a kids trip and look forward to a grandparent trip next year.

Curious about what you decided, OP?

OP, I would go if you and husband believe it will be fun and you do not depend on his parents' "approval" financially.

Your ILs had many opportunities to vacation with your family, but they chose not to. That's their choice. It may have been hurtful to your family, but you accepted/respected it.

Similarly, your choice to vacation with SIL is your choice. It may be hurtful for ILs, but they are also better off accepting/respecting it.

If they end up not respecting your choice, that is about them, it is not an issue you crated.

Parents can get hurt, it's not terminal, good lord. Their hurt is based on an entitlement to a certain type of family vacation that fits their desires. But right now, daughter does not want it. That's how it goes sometimes, sadly. But intruuding on the ability of sibs to then go through guilt or other covert pressure strikes me as manipulative. (If that's how they roll versus this being more about op's anxieties and desires to please).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a parent I would love for my kids and their spouses to be close enough to vacation together regardless of whether I come along. It just wouldn’t enter my radar to have an issue with this.

I get that too as a parent, but I think part of the issue is the daughter repeatedly declines a vacation that the parents offer, and then intentionally leaves them out to do a similar type of vacation. I can see how that's hurtful to the parents. It means they are constantly excluded from any vacation with their daughter rather than sometimes the daughter/son do a vacation with their parents, sometimes without.

But that is on the daughter not the op or her husband/their son

Decide what works for your family and do that. My relationship with my sil was affected by my intrusive mil, who always had to join on all visits and trips ALWAYS. The one time she was not included she guilted my sil, or at least tried to. I felt badly, sil did not, because she recognized sometimes it's a sibling thing. In retrospect I think Mil was quite selfish. At the time though, I felt badly.