After planning a massive Disney World trip last summer, MIL was understandably burned out from planning summer vacation for the 6 grandkids this year. She gave heavy hints to DH that he was in charge this year (by which I mean, she asked if he had thoughts and then said she was not going to plan anything but someone else should feel free).
DH’s first attempt was a week at the in-laws like old times back when nobody had enough money and there were enough beds to fit all the parents and children (so 4 grandkids and one house remodel that turned a bedroom into a kitchen and another into an office ago). That went over like lead. So DH added a 2 day trip to an Historic Site that is ~3 hours from the grandparents and 1.5 hours from both his siblings. (Oddly, none of them has ever been with their kids.) MIL seemed … disappointed… that there were only 2 days of things planned.
So after an extensive conversation with DH’s brother and SIL and a lengthy gchat with a friend from high school who grew up near said Historic city, we came up with 2 more days of activities (MIL still disappointed… can the kids really handle that much educational stuff? But, we said, there’s a water park! And a summer festival! And she was happier.)
So we bought plane tickets for DH and the kids. $1,365. If we were driving I’d also be going to break up the driving shifts. But DC2 tends to throw up on long trips and we can afford it… but honestly I don’t see much point in me going too when I could be doing work and not spending $455 on a plane ticket. If they were going someplace I wanted to go… Not that I’ve got anything against [Midwestern town], but from what I understand, I’ve been there, done that, and not much has changed since my own childhood. (There is one Frank Lloyd Wright house I’m a little bummed at not getting to see, but I bet without me there they won’t go see it.)
But it’s too expensive to get all 4 families anyplace in the summer that I’d like to go. I have some truly ridiculously expensive work junkets this summer that I’m not taking the family on. One because the plane tickets to [insert fancy outdoorsy destination for economists and east coast elite] in the summer were just too too much, another that isn’t terribly expensive but conflicts with the coding daycamp DC1 really wants to go to… another conflicts with another camp DC1 is going to (Irritatingly, there are PLENTY of expensive day camps for DC1 this summer, but I only put away $3000 in the DDA after last year’s fiasco). Conferences in expensive locations that aren’t on the west coast are completely wasted on me. I just fly in, conference, and fly out, spending most of the time trying to regulate my temperature with layers. We might use my frequent flyer miles to fly in MIL so DC2 and DH can go with me to the second city, though that doesn’t seem like a great deal for MIL.
Anyway, back to the trip. We found a house ($867) that fits three families and its guest house that fits a couple ($265) to rent for about the same price as hotels, which made MIL happy. Houses are also easier for us to just pay for. I’m pretty sure this wouldn’t put a crimp in the in-laws budget or DH’s brother’s family’s, but SIL’s family is younger and not yet comfortably off (not to mention used to MIL and FIL paying for stuff like this). So we don’t have a problem paying for it. The thing is, DH’s younger siblings don’t think of chipping in for housing when it’s a group house and it doesn’t seem right that MIL and FIL should be responsible for it all when they’re retired and we make so much money. If we were doing hotels, it would be harder to finagle that trick– everyone would probably pay for their own room except MIL would pay for SIL’s. (Is it crass that I pay attention to these things? I worry a lot about people being forced to pay for things in the interest of family harmony when we can easily shoulder some of that burden. I’d prefer to spend $455 on IL’s housing than on a plane ticket for myself…)
So… family summer vacation of $2,500, plus whatever they spend on eating out. (DH suspects MIL also wanted to not be responsible for a ton of cooking, which is understandable.)
Seems like a lot just to go to the Midwest, but hey, it’s less than going to Hawaii, amirite? Or Europe? Heck, it’s less than we spent at Disney last year.
Man, I suck at vacations.
Do you have upcoming vacation plans? Who plans your family gatherings?
Grumpy Rumblings (of the formerly untenured) 
April 22, 2019 at 12:24 pm
Planning vacations with extended family is hard! But… that’s what we’re doing this year. We want to take my older daughter to Prince Edward Island while she’s still young enough to really get into the Anne of Green Gables stuff (she loves the books), and since my parents had been talking about visiting Nova Scotia and PEI, too, we decided to all go at the same time. So far, coordinating things is going well. I think our final cost will be a lot more than $2500, though! I hadn’t realized how few flights there are into Halifax when I first suggested the idea. My parents are flying somewhere in New England and driving up, but we don’t have enough time to do that, so we’re sucking it up and paying for flights into Halifax. But travel is one of the things we happily spend money on so I don’t really mind. I’ll do the initial planning for our family (with input from my husband and the kids), and then negotiate with my parents and sister to figure out the overall plan. I enjoy vacation planning, so although it takes a lot of time, I don’t really mind doing it.
We happen to have done a beach holiday with my in laws over Christmas, too. My husband and SIL did most of the planning on that one.
We don’t do extended family vacations every year, though! That would be too much for me. There are no conflicts within my family or with my in-laws, but we like to have our own time, too.
April 22, 2019 at 12:35 pm
We do vacations with grandparents every two or three years. Like Cloud, I value the time with the grandparents highly and they and our kids have made some wonderful memories, but it’s also important for us to be forced to just be us for a concentrated period of time. DH and I plan trips together, although it majorly stresses me out to plan–not sure why. He’s the one who prods us to get it done.
April 22, 2019 at 1:11 pm
I’m boring and the only trip I really take each year is to go to FinCon. Though this year I’m going to go a few days early so that I can do some touristy stuff beforehand. I do want to start traveling more, but I don’t get paid time off, and I’m the only person on my shift. Other people have to work extra shifts when I go away. So I don’t like to leave work for too long at any one time. As it is, FinCon + 3-5 days beforehand will be stretching it quite a bit guilt-wise.
April 22, 2019 at 1:27 pm
This is not your fault, don’t feel guilty. It is your manager’s fault.
April 24, 2019 at 1:30 pm
We have 3 family members coming to our house from Poland for 3 weeks in July. So we’ll do the New Englandy tourist stuff. I will have to rent a van as our car can’t seat everyone. The kids are taking a fishing trip with my husband in Canada as well. I am not going on the fishing trip. My husband isn’t going to do the city stuff so we can maximize our vacation time with the kids.
Lots of people think it’s strange that we don’t take all our vacations together but it’s just practical. We do a big family vacation every other year.
May 17, 2019 at 1:58 pm
At this moment in time, I have very little interest in doing extended-family vacations beyond what we already do every year for the holidays. That’s enough of a dose on one side and the other side doesn’t have the money for vacations as such, mostly. We just get together and spend time together, that’s good enough for us at this age and stage. I typically do the heavy lifting on travel plans though if we’re visiting family, that’s not a vacation. We don’t vacation every year, we see various branches of family once or twice a year, and then add a vacation once every two or three years.
That actually reminds me that I have to make some arrangements for the end of the year.
May 17, 2019 at 2:15 pm
DH is the only family member who lives out of state… he has a very close-knit family. Unlike mine, which is scattered all over the US.
He’d be perfectly happy to just hang out and have the kids hang out, but I think MIL is so set on being the perfect grandma and doing things she’s not crazy about like extensive homemade cooking that she can only handle that once a year. It’s a lot of work! There’s less pressure for her when they go elsewhere.
Since I wrote this post, I’ve actually booked two more trips because I’m going on conferences in places DH would like to go (my favorite family vacation: I spend all day at a conference while the rest of the family sight-sees). For one of them we’re only taking DC2 because DC1 will be in camp and we’re using DH’s frequent flyer miles to fly out his mom to take care of DC1.
May 17, 2019 at 4:07 pm
Ohhh yeah cooking for that big a crowd is no kind of a vacation.
I also wanted to say that I don’t think it’s crass that you think about whether the Parents-in-law are paying for SIL etc or not, I think it’s kind and thoughtful. But that’s because it’s something I would appreciate.
July 31, 2019 at 1:24 am
[…] The other SIL also decided to stay at home from this summer’s vacation. […]
September 23, 2019 at 1:38 am
[…] looks like it will cost more than last year’s trip (even though last year we paid the entire housing) or the first real vacation and less than the […]