<p>First of all, I can easily see how this can turn into a several hundred dollar trip that eats into someone’s vacation time just coming and going. We don’t know how long the OP has been at his job; perhaps he’s in a newer job and only gets two weeks vacation, which means 80% of it might be spent on driving to/from with a couple of hotel nights thrown in if it’s more than 1,000 miles each way, plus gas for the car. So you’ve not only spent the money to get there, but you’ve eaten into 80% of your own vacation time that you now do not have to spend with your own family. When our kids were little and H had only had two weeks of vacation, we NEVER took a true family vacation. It wasn’t until he had more time that we actually took them to Disney World; they were in 5th and 8th grade by then. Every other trip we took before then was either to visit parents (thankfully they did not require work from us) or we’d drive to one of H’s conferences and tack on an extra few days to see sights in the area. In the meantime, his company was already paying for his hotel room, so it didn’t cost us extra, except for the extras days we’d stay beyond the conference. And when he didn’t fly, they’d reimburse mileage to drive to the conference. Of course, during those conference days, I was usually left to find ways to entertain the kids until H was done, then we’d all try to do something fun in the evening. Don’t get me wrong, we did have some amazing trips worked around conferences… Bozeman, Montana which we were able to see the Badlands, Yellowstone and the Lewis and Clark Trail, as well as some Little House on the Prairie stuff on our way back in Minnesota. When he had a trip to Williamsburg, VA, there were a ton of things to do, and after that conference was over, we drove to the NC outer banks and stayed there several nights. But even taking those days as vacation days around the conference ate into his two weeks he got each year. Then we still had to figure out how to see family at least once a year, who all lived 1000+ miles away. Four airfares were incredibly expensive for us at that time, so we often did those trips as driving trips, which again, ate into his vacation time. I began to resent that we never got to just plan a vacation that didn’t have anything to do with a conference or visiting family, so in 1999, we finally did that when we went to Disney World. I told H we needed to do it, to spend time alone with just our kids and create some family memories that weren’t tied to something else. Once we did it once, we were sold, and made more attempts to do so more often. Of course it became easier as his vacation time increased, and his salary increased so we weren’t limited to driving places. But it was important to me that we spent time together, just as a family without any influence of anyone else’s agenda. As it was, it wasn’t long after that, that it seemed like we started spending more time flying around the country for funerals as grandparents, then eventually parents started to die. </p>
<p>We, too, never had much luck getting the parents up to see us; my parents came perhaps twice in ten years, and H’s parents came once. Both sets of parents were retired and were financially able to do these trips (whether driving or flying). I began to resent (as did H) the fact that if we wanted to see them, we had to either nibble away at H’s vacation time, or spend big bucks to fly four of us somewhere. Yes, they are all gone now, but their missing out on time with us was partly their fault, too. The effort would have been MUCH easier on their part than ours, and they made a choice not to come more often, so I have no regrets that they did not see their grandchildren more often. I think D1 actually flew down to Houston a couple of times once she was old enough to spend a few nights with grandma and grandpa (which did not eat into H’s vacation time, nor did it cost us as much as flying all four of us down). D2 only went once… she never quite got over being homesick at as early an age as D1, so after the first time she went, she never went back alone. Neither one ever visited H’s parents alone. They never asked and we didn’t exactly feel safe sending them for several reasons… one being they had cats and both my kids, as well as my H were VERY allergic to cats (in fact, when H tried to tell his mom one time how we could never stay at her house if we visited, she accused him of lying about his cat allergy; believe me, if it weren’t so severe, we would have done it just to say, “I told you so.”</p>