Vacations with extended family?

[rin]

I'm trying to get a sense for how common it is for people to take vacations with just their nuclear family (kids and partner). Since my DD was born 16 months ago, my DH & I have taken one vacation with just the three of us, and all our other vacations have been to visit extended family members (parents, siblings, aunts/uncles/cousins, grandparents, etc).

We would love to take a vacation just the three of us, but it always seems like we need to be visiting someone (each of us is one of four siblings who live scattered across the country, our parents also had between 2 and 6 siblings each, many of whom we're close with, plus my grandmother is in her late 80s and I feel like we may not have the opportunity to spend that much more time with her).

How often do you take vacations with just your nuclear family versus with extended family? Poll coming in a sec!

[HIU8]

My kids are 4 and 6.5. We have NEVER been on a vacation where we are not visiting extended family.

[bubbaray]

All of our vacations are just our family (DH, the girls and I). He takes them to visit the ILs 1-2 times per year. We invited the ILs to DL with us and they refused, not interested. What-ev-er.

We take at least 2 vacations per year, at least one flying and one RVg. DH also takes the girls camping on his own 1-2 weeks of the summer. ILs joined him on one of those trips this year and he said never again. They were more high maintenance than the girls.

[JElaineB]

I voted 1 out of 4 are with our nuclear family. We pretty much use up all of our vacation time/money to visit my parents. We live in the midwest and they live on Cape Cod and we visit in the summers so it works out. We did take a trip with my parents this year to Disney World also. We have taken a couple of short trips (like 2-4 days) with just the nuclear family (me, DH, DS), but anything longer has been with or to visit my family.

[JoyNChrist]

Just our nuclear family, but all of our family lives nearby, so we don't really have anyone to visit.

[weech]

I voted 1 out of every 4 is just nuclear family. We're rarely going to visit family while on vacation, but we often bring family (grandparents/siblings) with us. I actually don't like going on vacation without grandparents anymore because it means DH and I get zero down/alone time.

[AnnieW625]

We have never travelled with our extended family, but most of our vacations are to visit our family.

[emily]

We probably will not go on vacations anytime soon after DC3 is born next March but...
Since DC1 was born 3 years ago, we have only taken 1 vacation with my family. All others was just us (i think 4 trips). We've also visited DH's family on the west coast (we live on east) 3x. I dont consider those vacations tho.

Once we have 3, I can't imagine going on vacation just us. We need more hands. I imagine we will do more trips with our siblings then.

[MelissaTC]

Just us although my sister has come with us a few times and gave a hand when M was younger. Now that M is in school, our vacation time is limited. We try to visit with family but to me, it is more important that we all bond together as a family. We see my sister and parents often though. We are actually going on our first trip with my in-laws in a few weeks since before M was born. I think it will be ok. We made sure we rented a really large condo with 3 bedrooms and bathrroms so everyone could have privacy.

[TwinFoxes]

All of our vacations are just with "us". We don't count our visits to IL's as a vacation, it's just in a different category altogether. We are talking about taking a real vacation with the whole gang (DH's mom, sisters, BILS, and all the kids) in the next year or so.

[BabyBearsMom]

Our extended family is mostly close (my parents and DH's parents are within a 1 hr drive, my sister is 20 minutes away). DH's siblings live further away, but DH doesn't "visit" them per se, so our vacations aren't about visiting family. However, about every other year or so, we typically have to go on vacation with DH's family for some sort of reunion or family wedding etc. For those of you who know my relationship with my crazy MIL, you understand how unpleasant this is. This year, we went on vacation with friends but next year our vacation will be DH's family reunion...which may be in Branson, MO (I may need to jump out of the airplane on the way there).

[♥ms.pacman♥]

i voted 1 out of 4 is a nucelar-family only vacation. pretty much all of our "vacations" have been to visit my family (3 hour plane ride) or DH's family (5 hour drive). not sure if i consider those "vacations"..we stay at our parents house and do all the family stuff. we've never been to Disneyland or a resort or whatever with just the kids. we did go to Toronto when DS was 6 mos just the three of us, but it was bc DH had a conference there and we tagged along. it was sort of a vacation though for us, and we stayed extra days to sight-see. so that counts IMO!

and, last week we did something where we visited my parents for a week and then for the weekend (me, DH and the kids) drove to Monterey and stayed at a cottage near the ocean. we did the trip with a couple friends from high school and their kids. While it wasn't exactly a "vacation" either (an entire weekend with 5 kids under 5 in one roof, need i say more! lol), it was kinda nice to be on an actual vacation (going sightseeing, seeing the aquarium) as a family.

i guess since our families live far away, almost all of our trips are to visit family. both of our moms have recently been dealing with health issues (cancer treatments, surgeries, hospitalizations, etc) so they can't travel much to visit us. though i think we'll definitely do more real "vacations" just as family once kids get older. we are looking forward to taking the kids to Disneyland in a year or two, once they are old enough to appreciate it.

[lhafer]

All of our vacations are with just our nuclear family.

All of our family lives 5 hours away in the same city. We don't consider visiting them vacation. We visit everyone during one trip. We usually take a long weekend to go visit our parents, extended family and we usually do it several times a year. The ILs and my sister come to visit us occasionally as well. My parents NEVER come to visit us.

Vacations to us are going somewhere we want to go....the past couple of years it's been to:
A cruise to the Carribean
Florida - 10 days at Disney World
Mexico - a week long suprise birthday trip for me (me, DH, and DD1 - DD2 wasn't born yet)
Florida - week in Destin (just got back a couple of weeks ago)
Austin - a nice resort in the hill country

Stuff like that. Visiting family is visiting family. Not vacation!!

That said, I would love for some of our family to go on vacation with us. They either aren't interested, working, have other vacation plans, etc. Too bad...their loss. We've had a great time on all of our vacations!

[elephantmeg]

we do the occasional camping trip just us, but otherwise we camp with the IL's. We otherwise visit my parents or my brother, or meet up with some extended family at the beach. This summer we did one extended family at the beach, 2-3 camping trips with the IL's, one without and then DH and I went away just the 2 of us.

[SnuggleBuggles]

Random trip here and there just our immediate family but most of the time we are visiting family.

Beth

[maestramommy]

I can't remember the last time we took a trip with just our family, because just about every trip we've taken is to visit family, either my parents or the ILs. In fact, we took a trip to Maui over 2 years ago to celebrate MIL's 70th, and SIL's family was there. Part of it is that Dh gets 3 weeks of vacay, so at least one week is to visit ILs. Then this year I took one week to visit my folks with Arwyn, and then we took one week to travel to a family reunion.

I think we are getting close though, to taking a trip with just us to Disney, or something like that. But we'd like to wait until the kids are older so they can walk by themselves and carry a daypack.

Still, I really love visiting the ILs. They are a lot of fun, and the two nieces are much older than our kids, so it does give us a bit of a break.

[niccig]

DS was 5 yo before we had a vacation that was just us. We LOVED it. And will now do it every 2 years. On the off year, we'll try to just do a weekend away to somewhere local, so DH doesn't have to take time off.

All our vacation is to see family and after 5 years, we were done with it, so we now have our new policy. It means less time with extended family, and they were disappointed, but we NEED the time of just us as well.

[HannaAddict]

99% of our vacations our nuclear family only. That makes it a vacation, not an obligation!

[Twoboos]

DDs were 5 & 7 when we did our first nuclear family vaca this past April (3.5 days at DL!). Then we followed up 3.5 days w/MIL, so does that even count? ;)

Usually we have to visit MIL (West Coast) or SIL (mid-West) or DH's extended fam (Canada). Or we are doing our 2 weeks at the beach with my extended family (non-negotiable!).

So... mostly family visting vacations. It's hard when everyone lives all over the place.

[g-mama]

All of our family lives within a 1-hour radius so we see them once or twice a month, sometimes more often. That means that we never have to travel or make a plan to take days off and go visit family and call it a vacation.

When we do travel, we don't go with anyone else like friends or family. I don't mind the idea of traveling with others. I feel like almost everyone I know goes to the beach with other families or extended families, but we've never done it. Dh is not all that interested in doing that, and it's fine with me, too.

I guess there's good and bad in everything. I see people on FB talking about going here, there and everywhere all summer long and every break, visiting fun places and very often, it's to visit family. We don't have anyone to visit, so sometimes I feel like our lives are less interesting. You know...the grass is always greener. I could see me taking off with my boys while dh worked to go on trips like that and it would be much less expensive than always going where we had to stay at a hotel or resort. I mean, I still would love to take vacations like we do now, but have other places to go to break up what can be a monotonous summer, KWIM?

[hillview]

This year we did
Disney with my parents
England to see his mom (plus 3 days in London just us)
DH and I (just us) went to Miami for my 40th
My mom and I took DS1 to see her mom
Cape with my parents (DH was away most of this time)
Thanksgiving we are going just the 4 of us

So I voted 1/4 more or less
/hillary

[WatchingThemGrow]

I'm not a fan of how our vacations are structured right now, but it is what it is.

1 week - supposed to be with DH's extended family at the beach house (or not this year)
1 week - on the way to my mom's, we stay at WDW overnight.
1 night - somewhere like GWL
1 weekend - we go to where my dad lives and stay in a hotel (or not this year)

Waaaah. Here's what I would like:

1 week - skiing vacation in Jan
1 week - early March - mom's house/WDW
1 week - June - DH's family goes cruising together or to a destination
1 week - August - Fly somewhere neat - Canada, Michigan, CO, San Diego, etc.