those who don’t live near family: how do you spend your vacations?

[1stjohn0666]

my husb is a resident and gets 3 1-week vacations per year. this past year, after the birth of our son (now 9 mo) we spent these vacations as follows: (1) visiting (& staying w) his parents in NYC (2) split bw visiting his grandma in SF and my parents in LA (3) visiting his grandpa in phoenix. our first vacation of next year will be (4) staying at a beach house in NY w his dad, stepmom, and stepsisters.

my husb’s familial/friend relationships are different than mine. he speaks w his family on the phone a few times a week and also visit each other several times a year. i am more irregular with communication, and my siblings and i have always been pretty independent/do our own thing, but we love and support each other just the same. my brother, both parents, and a few good friends have come to visit us (flown cross-country)/to see the baby in the last 9 months.

my question is: if you do not live near family, do you use your vacations to visit them? how often?

ideally, i would spend most or like at least half? of vacation time doing something fun with just my nuclear family. maybe visit my fam once/year and my husbands fam same. but this won’t fly w my husband, who as i said would like to visit his fam multiple times/year. i am not sure how to handle this… maybe vacationing separately? which seems even worse than spending it w my ILs.. like i guess id rather spend time w my husb and ILs than no husb at all?

 

[almostfast]

@1stjohn0666 His family is also able to use their vacation time to visit you...it should go both ways.

 

[elite_jedi]

@almostfast Yeah. This is my thing. I got fed up with us never getting a visit from my husband’s dad (despite offering to put them up and even pay for airfare) so I stopped pushing it. He’s pretty passive about trip planning so while I’d willingly go if he did the work, we haven’t seen them in four years now.

 

[aaronq10]

@almostfast Yes but you are still using PTO to hang out with them no?

 

[almostfast]

@aaronq10 Well I would keep going to work while the ILs visit and save my PTO for real vacation if it were me

 

[aaronq10]

@almostfast Well same but what about husband

 

[clayton2018]

@1stjohn0666 We spent one week a year on a family vacation and the rest was spent visiting family.

 

[cristina49]

@1stjohn0666 I live near family, however once I had kids my dad gave me great advice. Take one vacation with your nuclear family once a year.

My parents never did this and my mom only ever prioritized family visits and our family definitely sacrificed because of it.

It is difficult because of PTO and also the cost (staying with family is much less expensive).

I think this is a really important thing to get on the same page about in a marriage and isn't talked about much before hand.

 

[imageboy]

@1stjohn0666 My husband and I are probably more like you in regard to how close we are to our families. I expect to travel to my dad and FIL/MIL every other year. Generally I make these partially working trips so I don’t have to take a ton of time off. This hasn’t been perfect, after having our first, we had twins so we were basically grounded from 2016-2021 avoiding travel with three small kids and avoiding Covid.

We generally take a summer vacation with the kids for one week to a national park. And try to fit in a family vacation too. We invite family members to come with us on vacations so we can get some face time in like that. However half of our family can’t really travel due to various illnesses and other limitations. As the kids get older I hope to make more short weekend trips with one or two kids to different family members to make up for it.

I would definitely try to get family to join you on vacations where you want to go rather than just traveling to see them at their homes. It isn’t reasonable to spend all of your free time and money and not enjoy your vacation. As your kid gets bigger you will want them to experience new things also.

 

[victoriablackwell]

@1stjohn0666 Since my son was born 3 years ago we’ve only done trips with family or to see family

A big reason is cost… we can either stay with family or if we go somewhere new with family our parents usually subsidize the lodging & food.

Plus, then we have extra hands to help with the kids. Usually this means some free babysitting so husband and I can do a date night or activity together. For example, we went on a cruise to Alaska with my family when my oldest was 18 months & my parents took my son one day so husband and I could do a bikes & brew adventure. Another night my sister and her boyfriend stayed in the room while son slept so we could go to a theater show.

In a few weeks we’re headed to a beach house MIL & FIL have rented.

What I really want is a vacation with just my husband, no kids. This year with a baby and a toddler has been tough!!! (Not in the cards for many reasons right now though)

 

[kram1005]

@victoriablackwell That’s awesome that your in laws help with kids! I agree a child free vacation is the best, but the compromise approach seems decent.

 

[1stjohn0666]

@victoriablackwell ooh your trips w family seem nice! i’d love a cruise to alaska even if it meant having to hang out w my ILs

 

[victoriablackwell]

@1stjohn0666 Haha well the cruise to Alaska was with my family, and not the typical trip! But it was certainly nice.

In-law trips tend to be renting a house somewhere. Still nice though!

 

[mklm]

@1stjohn0666 You’ll need a sit down discussion about how you’d like to spend your vacation time - one trip as a family to visit his parents and the rest of the trips for you guys only.

He can visit his family solo the other times and ditto for you too.

However, this discussion needs to happen MUCH BEFORE any vacation is on the horizon otherwise it will look like you are deliberately putting him on the spot - which will make him even more defensive.

 

[gelb1472]

@1stjohn0666 We have 2 places we need to go see family and we have typically gone to 1 each year. My new plan though is to get the family to go on vacations and stop going to their house lol. In 2024 we are going on vacations with my parents, the inlaws, and my sister, so it’s working well so far!

 

[jamesmason10]

@gelb1472 Yes, I am working on doing that with siblings. I'll still have to travel to see my parents who can't really travel now, but knowing I've seen the rest of the family I can make the visits shorter. The last couple of years between elderly parents and very young nieces and nephews we spent basically all our free time visiting them and it's a bit frustrating.

 

[secureinhislove]

@1stjohn0666 We both did residency in a city where we had no family. All of our vacations were spent seeing family. Sometimes we did do vacations separately, mostly because our schedules didn’t match up.

 

[aspiringchristian105]

@1stjohn0666 We are in San Diego and have a two year old.

In the past year we did a week in VA with my dad, a week in Austin with husbands family, a week in NJ with my mom, and a long weekend in AZ with my husbands family. We have like 5 days in Austin planned for March.

We also had family stay with us for at least 2 weeks.

We did one long weekend family trip to Disneyland.

We have closer to like 6 weeks of vacation time. Maybe more - we have “unlimited”. But I imagine if we had less, I’d want more time as a family.

My husband is close with his three siblings. Like talk weekly close. And I love that for him, I love that for our daughter. His siblings love her like she is one of their own and vice versa.

I guess what do you feel like your vacations with extended family are lacking? Can you carve out more of that while on those big trips!

 

[jzeeb]

@1stjohn0666 What about combining visits? You can travel to Phoenix or SF the same time as his parents so you can see both during the same week. The second vacation is for the other grandparent + your family. The third is for just you. Another option is to visit family for a few days, they take care of your LO, and you do a couples vacation nearby. Training doesn’t last forever and there will eventually be more time for yourselves.

 

[katrina2017]

@1stjohn0666 Okay, I'm the one that's very close to my family and also lives away from them. I have two sets of grandparents, one parent, two siblings, and two grown children that are clustered in in two areas of the US Those two areas 8 hrs apart driving and 20 hrs + from us.

I'll just say it's hard no matter how you split the time. If we spend time with the kids, I worry because my grandparents are all in their late 80s and might not make it until another visit. If we spend vacation time with the grandparents, I miss out on seeing my kiddos and siblings. And all of that takes away from "fun" vacations with just my husband and the kids still at home.

None of my family really have the financial means to travel to us, except for the grandparents who would struggle physically.

For now, we take one fun trip, and then I take one long trip to see everyone. Seeing your family once a year isn't great when you are close, but it's better than nothing

We've also rented a vacation home in the past in a more central location and invited everyone. That was nice and several people came, but again finances were a blocker for some even though we paid the majority