Anonymous wrote:For those of you who say you learned the lesson and don't vacation with family anymore, did you stop vacationing with all of the family?

I love traveling with some of my siblings, but one is really hard to travel with. I posted a couple years ago about whether it was OK for the rest of us to go on a trip without her, and DCUM gave a pretty universal "no" but it seems really unfair that my choices are to basically parent her kids the whole trip, or to just accept I can't go with the others.

We only do resorts now. No house shares. My parents pushed back initially "but we'll never see each other!!!" but after I finally got them to try it my way they realized how much nicer it was to not be awakened by grandkids at zero dark thirty and for everybody to have their own space to retreat to.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They need to add “elderly relative who insists on cooking meals for everyone but has questionable food safety practices”. That always makes thing fun.

We have this relative (marinates raw meat loosely covered in the fridge, balancing precariously on top of produce) and she also vastly underestimates how much food to make so at least it gives us an excuse to head out for pizza!

I'm not entirely sure what's wrong with this one, other than that "precariously balanced" is a little annoying because you have to be careful. Do you think that there is something that is going to jump out of the marinade and onto the produce? Do you want your meat hermetically sealed?

The raw meat was on a shallow serving platter loosely covered with saran wrap. Yes, I was worried about the meat juices dripping out onto the produce that it was balanced atop since the fridge was jam packed with groceries and various people were in and out of the fridge every 5 minutes jostling stuff around to get a drink or a snack.

Another family member suggested putting the chicken pieces in a ziploc in the drawer with other raw meats (the platter wouldn't fit) and the "chef on duty" told him to stop being paranoid and that if he wanted to be in charge of dinner while she sat on the deck with her wine then he could have at it, but otherwise leave it alone.

Anonymous wrote:For those of you who say you learned the lesson and don't vacation with family anymore, did you stop vacationing with all of the family?

I love traveling with some of my siblings, but one is really hard to travel with. I posted a couple years ago about whether it was OK for the rest of us to go on a trip without her, and DCUM gave a pretty universal "no" but it seems really unfair that my choices are to basically parent her kids the whole trip, or to just accept I can't go with the others.

According to my friend's SIL, it is perfectly fine to vacation with the entire family, and don't tell one particular (and generous) sibling about it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They need to add “elderly relative who insists on cooking meals for everyone but has questionable food safety practices”. That always makes thing fun.

We have this relative (marinates raw meat loosely covered in the fridge, balancing precariously on top of produce) and she also vastly underestimates how much food to make so at least it gives us an excuse to head out for pizza!

I'm not entirely sure what's wrong with this one, other than that "precariously balanced" is a little annoying because you have to be careful. Do you think that there is something that is going to jump out of the marinade and onto the produce? Do you want your meat hermetically sealed?

Anonymous wrote:Okay, folks-I’m going to be on the frontlines tomorrow. An increasingly “gracious” series of emails re: dinners has been exchanged AND two of the teens (our family and another) are newly vegetarian, one adult newly gluten free and another “minimizing nightshades.” Wish me luck!

Pp here with a report. dinner last night was like the fyre festival. (in terms of logistics failure, not menu. By 9 pm I would have welcomed a fyre festival style cheese sandwich, actually.)

For those of you who say you learned the lesson and don't vacation with family anymore, did you stop vacationing with all of the family?

I love traveling with some of my siblings, but one is really hard to travel with. I posted a couple years ago about whether it was OK for the rest of us to go on a trip without her, and DCUM gave a pretty universal "no" but it seems really unfair that my choices are to basically parent her kids the whole trip, or to just accept I can't go with the others.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Complain to DCUM bitterly, bitterly, how your MIL wants to sit at the table and chat with you over coffee.

Hi Crazy Mil Lady. You REALLY need a hobby other than dcum.

Wait, what? You know there are many, many, many unreasonable MILs out there, right??

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My sister insisted her young daughter get her own room instead of sharing with her or her other daughter leaving my teenage son (the only boy in a house of 7 females) on the main couch. Those with teenage boys understand the need for privacy in the morning and she could not understand this.

What do teenage boys need to do in the morning requiring privacy that could not be done in the bathroom?

Do you not know the term 'morning wood'?

You 100% just made PP blush.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Have I just missed them, but it seems like there are far less "family beach house drama" threads being posted this summer? Kind of miss reading them!

When we know beo, we do better.

Sad. Oops. I meant great.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My sister insisted her young daughter get her own room instead of sharing with her or her other daughter leaving my teenage son (the only boy in a house of 7 females) on the main couch. Those with teenage boys understand the need for privacy in the morning and she could not understand this.

What do teenage boys need to do in the morning requiring privacy that could not be done in the bathroom?

Do you not know the term 'morning wood'?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My sister insisted her young daughter get her own room instead of sharing with her or her other daughter leaving my teenage son (the only boy in a house of 7 females) on the main couch. Those with teenage boys understand the need for privacy in the morning and she could not understand this.

What do teenage boys need to do in the morning requiring privacy that could not be done in the bathroom?

Get out of bed? I'm guessing you don't have a teenage boy.

Anonymous wrote:My sister insisted her young daughter get her own room instead of sharing with her or her other daughter leaving my teenage son (the only boy in a house of 7 females) on the main couch. Those with teenage boys understand the need for privacy in the morning and she could not understand this.

What do teenage boys need to do in the morning requiring privacy that could not be done in the bathroom?

I’ll toss in my MIL and her oven that isn’t calibrated correctly (and she knows this). Whatever gets cooked (including TG turkeys, etc) goes in for a set time at a set temp and always comes out partially undercooked. Fun times.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You forgot the one adult sibling who doesn’t watch their own kids and how another adult is suddenly in charge of several other children who are never well behaved.

I was this victim on two beach vacations. Folks me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. So there was never a third time. I never vacation with my sister ever again.

I think you and I have the same sister!

omg! This always happened when the kids in our family were little though thankfully my nieces and nephew were well behaved. We did family beach vacations for a decade with my siblings and their kids. If I was heading to the beach I’d be asked to take their kids along. If I was in the house, the kids would announce that their parents had gone out and told them I was in charge. I reached the point where I’d try to sneak down to the beach with my kids before anyone saw us leaving. This was only rarely successful as you can imagine since my kids would mention to their cousins they were heading to the beach or the cousins would spot us walking out the door and ask to come along.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Oh how l hated going to my ex’s families beach house.

They were a once wealthy family that was coming down a bit in the world. Most of them didn’t know how to cook or clean, or pretended not to know how, but they no longer had full time staff at the beach house. They would literally go hungry waiting for someone to bring food - like l once saw a group of 5 or 6 40 somethings all expect that someone else was getting dinner and then finally eating dry crackers, not even cheese. I had ordered pizza but just enough to feed my own family and the kids. I wasn’t ok letting the kids go hungry. It was so bizarre.

This would be such a good sitcom storyline.

I kind of feel like l could write a book about my ex’s family. It would include mistresses, cocaine, prison, feuding families, dropping bags of cash out of airplanes, disputed inheritance (of course)

Please do! Or at least do an AMA. Bags of cash out of airplanes makes you the automatic winner of any IL complaint/drama thread. I’m only aware of Thorntons and Coopers in this category.