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

[1stjohn0666]

@haaaamoud yep this is how i feel we spent the first year also and it’s exhausting and has made an already difficult transition even more difficult :/ like who even benefitted from this??? and at what cost??

 

[theisticlogicianlogoninon]

@1stjohn0666 We see my aunt and uncle (they own a beautiful beach home) 1x a year, take one trip that is just my husband and I 1x a year, and the rest are nuclear family trips.

We are fortunate to be awarded a lot of PTO so I know this is not the norm.

 

[tshimangadzo]

@1stjohn0666 99% of our vacations have been to visit family. I have a large family that I'm very close with and I want my kids to be able to grow up with cousins and see them as much as we can (my dad's side alone has 11 kiddos). Grandparents will come out and see us as well 2-3x/year. We've only been on one family vacation with just the 3 of us, and we enjoyed it, but we definitely would want family around.

 

[theperfectbone]

@1stjohn0666 My oldest is almost 7. Both our families live out of state. I'm struggling to come up with any examples of vacations that didn't involve visiting some family in that time.

We've been to a few destination friend weddings (3 in 7 years I think), but that's a long weekend here or there.

Up until this past summer we lived in Texas and would alternate summers for our big road trip: one year drive to his brother in Denver, the opposite year drive to my parents in NC. We'd make a vacation of it (both are 16+ hour drives so we'd stop along the way and do stuff, and also play tourist while we were there). In 2021 we camped overnight on our way to Denver and then rented a house in the mountains with brother's family and toured Rocky Mountain National Park. In 2022 on our way back from NC we stopped at this awesome B&B in Arkansas to sleep in a one room log cabin- honestly one of my favorite stops. Twice we used that Denver trip to visit other friends in CO while we were out there.

Now that we moved back east, I'm tentatively planning this summer's road trip to be to Chicago where like half my husband's extended family lives.

Idk, we do a good mix of using the vacations for fun as well as visiting family, but I can't come up with a single vacation since my oldest was born where the destination wasn't chosen based on visiting someone.

 

[thedude2011]

@theperfectbone What is the name of the B&B in Arkansas, or the name of the town? We have family and friends who drive between TX and NC a few times a year and I’d love to be able to share that with them!

 

[theperfectbone]

@thedude2011 https://www.coulterfarmstead.com/

We found them on AirBNb but you can also book direct. Don't sleep on that frozen dinner from the general store, it was SO good I still think about it.

 

[thedude2011]

@theperfectbone Thank you!

 

[zindebaad]

@1stjohn0666 Most of our time off has been spent visiting family, too. Everybody lives in different places so it’s hard. I really want to take a vacation where it’s just the three of us going someplace fun.

 

[rosiem]

@1stjohn0666 The only family we visit are my in-laws, and they are snowbirds, so when they are near us, we try to spend as many weekends with them (45 mins drive from us) Also, during the summers they take our kids for a couple of nights a week, usually Sun-Weds (pick them up Weds evening) and they go to camp Th & Fri.

Then in the Spring we take our 1 week vacation and spend it with them (and its cost effective too). We love it, we love spending time with them. I only see my mom a few times a year. As the kids get older, we will probably do a couple of long weekend trips places, but for now, this is how we spend our time. And only 1 week of it is vacation time. I'm still at a point where I am hoarding vacation days for sicknesses LoL

 

[spacecadet3767]

@1stjohn0666 We did exclusively trips to visit family during residency, with a handful of short driving/weekend trips just us and the kids. It is way cheaper and easier to go somewhere to visit/meet up with grandparents. They also travel to us regularly so it’s not one-sided, and it’s a priority that our kids are close with their grandparents.

 

[joshua1987]

@1stjohn0666 In another country. Usually my family meet us there!

 

[ellisjay2]

@1stjohn0666 We fly to see family once a year (they live within a 4 hour drive, so we can see almost everyone in one trip). All other time off is just us 3 (sometimes my sister who lives an hour away joins). My husband feels more like your husband and I feel more like you about vacations and extended family. I get annoyed that we fly once a year and it’s always to the place we grew up. I’d rather fly to Costa Rica or something! My husband turns 40 this year so we are working on planning a trip (not to the east coast!) somewhere fun.

 

[stuart1717]

@1stjohn0666 Honestly, we can't afford to do family vacations unless they involve extended family; my parents will pay for plane tickets and travel expenses. Otherwise we don't go anywhere because we can't afford it; we've literally never had a "family vacation" with just the four of us, unless you count going away for a night or two of camping nearby as a vacation.

 

[criticalthinker1]

@1stjohn0666 Your post is too relevant for me! We have the same thing. All of our PTO was spent on family. Not all bad…some of it is a family planned trip to a different location. But we really got sick of not having any time for our nuclear family.

We try to take a few weekends here and there just for our family, and if possible an entire week. It doesn’t happen every year (especially when both our moms love to plan epic family vacations ha) but we’re making a conscious effort.

 

[sanjose1982]

@1stjohn0666 I really like visiting my parents and for the most part my husband does too (helps that they live in LA and have a pool while we live somewhere w winter. We also lived there ourselves a decade ago so still have friends to visit/see ). Neither of us likes visiting his parents, mostly because of their location/house set ups.

We visit my family about twice a year. I went solo once (no regrets but the plane flight was hard) but usually my husband comes with. He can work remotely so he will do so for part of the time while my mom and I are on kid duty. That way he’s burning less PTO on my fam. I also make sure to give him space to go visit his friends (eg a day off) because while he likes my parents just fine it’s not vacation vibes for him to spend a week w them.

We haven’t been to visit his family since my 19 month old was born. To assuage that guilt and still see them, we’ve paid for them to come to us and we’ve invited his mom a long on a vacation that was near to her (she lives in a small town in GA. We went to a beach town in FL in February. She could drive there so we covered her hotel. It was great having grandma for some babysitting and we got to be somewhere fun that actually felt like a vacation). But honestly his parents are both retired and live in inconvenient unfun places. Neither of us want to do the work of traveling w a toddler to visit them. I try to give my husband space to go on solo trips down there when he wants. His brother just moved to Nashville so my husband has a solo trip planned to visit him next month.

Not sure if any of that was helpful so to close out we live a plane flight from all our families and while most of our trips involve family, I would NOT want to spend all our vacation time on family trips. So I think a mix makes sense

 

[jsilva18]

@1stjohn0666 I take the kids to visit my parents once a year and to visit my extended family once a year (depending on which family, my husband goes with us). My mom usually comes down one extra time and my sister comes every other month (two time aligned with the other vacations). About every-other year, we manage to find a time that works for my husbands family to visit them; but only because they are in fairly easy driving distance (less than 6 hours). I get 4 weeks of PTO and typically use most of it on those trips and some days off when my sister is here. My husband and I try to make use of the weekends to do fun things, sometimes when my sister is here (water park, beach, fun food, arcade, etc.).

A couple of notes:

1. My husband doesn't go with me to visit my parents because he doesn't fly and the only way to get to them either involves an airplane or a four-day road trip (one-way).
2. When my husband stays home from vacation it's usually to get something done in the house that can't be done with a baby/toddler around.
3. We would visit his family more often, but they tend to flake out on us...

I don't really have a problem with this arrangement, it's kind of what I grew up with. Even when we did fun trips they were alongside trips to visit family because my parents couldn't afford any more vacations (especially ones where they had to pay for hotels). My dad always disliked visiting my mom's family (so many people) but he would take us and kind of hide out or go for drives to manage the anxiety. For a while we lived in the state between my mom's parents and my dad's parents and so we would swap years and my dad's parents would typically come see us on the off year. They were often traveling for other reasons, so it made sense for them to stop in for a visit.

It sounds like you need to do what others have suggested. Sit down with your husband and talk about balancing out the vacation time and then talk to your husband's family about them taking initiative.

 

[neostarwcc]

@1stjohn0666 Three 1-week vacations a year - at least 1 week can be just your nuclear family!

 

[daylightdreaming]

@1stjohn0666 Me and my husband are both from different countries and living in a third one so we are both away from family. His parents are aging and MIL has been in a wheelchair for the past couple of years so them visiting us is not an option. The way we split it is:

Vacation 1: visit his family
Vacation 2: visit my family
Vacation 3: visit some other place, not family related

We have office based jobs and are able to work remotely so we usually do a second visit to my husband’s family and we work remotely the entire time we are there. It is also much cheaper to visit them than to visit my family.

My family in full do fly here every year so I also get to see them at least twice a year.

 

[thinkpure7]

@1stjohn0666 My husband is close with his family (they are 6 hours away) and I am not close with mine. Early in our relationship, we'd always vacation and spend all holidays with his. Now that we have kids, we do amended long weekend holidays with his family and spend our vacations with our nuclear family doing things we want to do - like seeing new places, traveling, etc. We have different vacation preferences from his family. We'd most likely have more vacations with them if we all liked the same things. But, alas, we don't want to stay in a cramped beach house in a remote place when we could explore a new place that has amenities and activities.

 

[glory35]

@1stjohn0666 Oof this is the continual argument. We live close to my family. I would say post kids about 3/4 of our vacations are to visit H's family. He'd be happy if we used all our vacations to visit his family.

1/4 of our vacations are just our nuclear family, but they're usually much smaller and local (e.g. camping or a weekend away). The big long week or two week trips almost always are grandparent trips.

I really miss travel just for fun or to explore a new area which we did a ton before kids, but we haven't been able to figure out a way to do that because my husband struggles with the idea that our kids won't be close to their grandparents if they don't see each other several times a year (which I get).