TTMA "vacationing" with extended family

[mc13]

Do you go on vacation with your parents and siblings or inlaws? If so, where do you go? How do you do it?

After a pretty terrible "vacation" with the inlaws last weekend, I came to the conclusion that it's just absurd to expect to travel someone that's not low key like the beach with more than just your immediate family. Like I think it's unrealistic to expect 3 separate family's (us+3 kids, MIL and FIL, SIL and BIL) to spend the whole day together for 3+ days.

[mapleme]

We don't vacation together (we visit each other), but I think that it totally depends on the families. Were there other kids in your group? IME, most people with kids just have no idea how to vacation with kids or how to help you with what you need. When I was visiting family sans DH recently the guys (older generation) would just meander away with their conversation where I couldn't follow because I had to stand on the stairs and make sure C didn't climb them. It was infuriating. The only person who would help was my sister, but her kids are constantly at an 11, so she's got her hands full. But then my uncle's GF arrived (4 barely grown kids) and she would regularly ask if I needed help, or would chase after a distracted kid (or at least tell me). It was a marked difference.

[rugger]

We've done extended family trips to the beach with MH's family. We split the cost of a big beach house and do most dinners at the house, but occasionally, the individual family units would go out separately. And each day was different with what everyone did. Sometimes together, sometimes separate.
It is totally unrealistic to expect everyone to always be together.

[milano]

I'm iffy on full-on vacationing with anybody. When I'm on vacation I don't want to work around multiple family's vacation styles. We also enjoy ourselves when we're OOT and eat at nice places and drink good drinks. We splurge and don't have a vacation "budget" that we follow. I realize this sounds kind of snooty, but our families are not like this and don't drink and aren't adventurous eaters so there is no real vacation scenario that would work out for everyone without a bunch of compromising.

We are going to Disney this winter and I planned our trip based on what we wanted to do and where we want to stay and eat, and then I told my parents they were welcome to join us for a night or two if they wanted to come down- but all my dinner reservations have already been made my hotel is booked and I'm not changing. They're more than welcome to get a room at the same hotel as us or room at a different Hotel, or if they were just staying one night they can stay in our room. So I feel like going forward if we're going to go somewhere that I think one of our parents might be interested in I'll plan our trip first and book everything and then mention it to them. That's the only way it will work for me. I may be selfish though.

I grew up with a lot of vacations every year, and I don't remember any grandparents or anyone ever going with us. MH grew up with the only vacation being visiting relatives once a year in the same place. We're on the same page for what we want our family vacations to be like.

[mc13]

mapleme no other kids and probably won't ever be for SIL. We have no family nearby so most of our trips are visiting each other. Those typically go well because there's no real expectations. However, MIL wanted to go to Montreal this year for a weekend and it was so rough. She expects us to spend almost every awake moment together and when the babies had to nap, they just sat around the hotel waiting for us instead of enjoying the alone time. It added stress to us because everyone was waiting on us and then we only had a limited amount of happy time and SIL/BIL would never be on time, and we'd sit in the lobby waiting for them instead of just saying "meet us X" ...and I'd basically start fuming.

[piccyami]

We never really did vacations with family, but there was one when I was in high school with basically my dad's entire family. It was awful. They all wanted to walk and visit museums for 14+ hours a day (to get the most out of the cost of the trip). We wound up breaking off at some point and just meeting up for certain museums.

[piccyami]

So, yeah. I'm not doing that again. If someone wants to meet up for part of a vacation, sure. I'm not up for doing everything with the whole family. We don't even spend all our time with family when we visit.

[mc13]

I'm totally with you milano. My family went on so many trips growing up but the only person to join, every once in a while, was my widowed grandmother. DH never went anywhere except to visit family since they lived overseas (military family) and he thinks his mom is trying to make up for that. Unfortunately, I think it's unrealistic but went along with it and once again, was proven right. ...we did Disney when R was 10 months old and omg it was the same. You'd think we'd learn by now.

[mc13]

So yeah, my feelings seem to be the consensus. Basically MIL wants us to spend every waking minute together and SIL is never on time so we end up wasting time waiting around. But then yesterday MIL said "I just wish you weren't so rigid and accepted help with the kids and everything would go much smoother." Pretty much saying it's all my fault. Ugh. They just don't get it. Our kids are little, they need their schedule or I'm the one that pays by having a million wake ups and miserable kids. DH and I are on the same page now. He wanted to make his mom happy, but now he sees it's just now worth the aggravation - at least not at this point in time.

[sarenu]

We went to the Kalahari water park with my sister.

It was fun, and I would do it again as the kids get older.

E and my nephew played together a lot, but my nephew is a little chicken for some of the water slides and E isn't big enough for some of them yet.

It was nice to hang with my sister while the kids napped.

However, we all did our own thing at times and were never forced to do everything together. Breakfast was done together (we did buffet, so it really wasn't a big deal).

[charlotte]

Nope nope nope.

Growing up, we never went on vacation with just our nuclear family, only with groups of extended family. I hated that.

No way am I going to spend our little bit of "extra" money on a "vacation" with my ILs or the extended family on my side. We already travel to visit our families every year-- when and if we have the spare $ to travel to vacation destinations I'd rather just enjoy ourselves and make memories with our little family.

[brandiewine11]

Absolutely not. No way no how.

One exception being a trip to Germany to visit family. My sister (who was 15) and my in laws came too. That was fine but we all had offset schedules so had time to ourselves too.

[critter015]

When I was a kid we did tons of vcationing with relatives, usually camping, but also the beach, mountains, even Vegas. It seems like there were usually people who split up and did different things but my family is also super close, so they are generally content to hang out just with each other.

[stringy]

I'm on vacation with my parents right now. But we are at the beach. The extra hands are key to having any kind of down time. But not actually that helpful except maybe for post bedtime drinks.

[stringy]

So it all depends on the people and expectations. If people are BSC and selfish then don't go with them. If they don't get what life with little kids is like. Don't go. Or at least get different living quarters and say hey maybe we will do mornings together and afternoons separate. Or something.


When I was in college we went on an extended family trip to Costa Rica. There were 17 of us. Ranging from 10-60 ish. These were mostly my second cousins and they all were used to traveling together and it was great. Every day some people did one thing and some did another. We rented a huge house with a central living area and multiple wings. All in all it mostly made me jealous I didn't get to travel with that crowd more often!

[tj]

I think our family trips usually work out pretty well. My. Either and SIL have 2 boys who are each just younger than my girls. Even though we have totally 100% different parenting styles, our vacations seem to work out fine. We all meet for breakfast, and hang out till lunch/nap times. Then we meet back up after everyone wakes up, and do dinner/evenings together. Once all the kids are in bed, the adults all hang out and drink and play cards together. The kids play great together, and keeps melt downs to a minimum. And having extra hands (my mom) is a super bonus.

Just my experience.

[sassyq]

I LOVE vacationing with extended family. From the time I was 2 u til I was 20 my grandparents took our whole family (23 people at its largest) to the beach every year. It was such a fabulous experience and we all loved it and were so blessed by it. Now we go with my parents every year since my whole family can no longer go.
Last year we went camping at a lake with my husband's extended family and it was pretty great. When it comes to vacationing, I feel like the more the merrier of course, I have an amazing extended family, and really great in laws.