Back story: since we had kids, my MIL has been down to stay for a week maybe twice a year or so. This has got more complicated as we've had more children, as she doesn't drive and it involves DH going to pick her up and take her back at the weekends (the IL's live 300 miles away). Its basically me babysitting her for a week taking her to garden centres and shopping while trying and failing to juggle work plus the whole young kids routines at the same time. FIL doesn't come as he is not keen to spend a whole week with young children , which is fair enough, and DH usually can't get time off work to help out.
So, fast forward to this summers visit. She wanted to come down for a week in May/June. We are horrifically up against it with change of jobs, house renovations, endless kids hobbies and taxi-ing around, zero time for ourselves let alone enabling a visitor to have a holiday. Nevertheless, I found 5 separate weeks that we could juggle around so she could come and stay.
They phone up, apparently none of those weeks are any good. They have a foreign holiday booked, medical appointments and a wedding to go to. They name 2 different weeks that we can't do as we have a pre-existing commitment (friends visiting) and get a barbed comment back about how busy we are. I stick to my guns though and tell DH I cant cope with her staying on top of the original arrangements, so he puts her off. She's upset. I scrabble around for a solution: aha, DH has a week off in the school summer holidays and the kids will be home all the time, perfect time for MIL to visit and she gets to spend all the time with her DS and DGC's. So we suggest it to her expecting her to jump at the chance, but the suggestion is met with silence and a "oh, I really wanted to laze around go clothes shopping in the daytime and then collect the kids from school".
I am trying to be as flexible as possible but we have so much on our plates and I am not a flaming travel agent They reject ideas of B&B's "don't like them". We are meeting at a mutual friends house this weekend and will talk about it more then apparently.
Any suggestions? Without me caving and then spending a week quietly seething with resentment. They have been good to us in the past, but I just don't have the time or energy for this.
Off to find a backbone
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AIBU?
I really hope its not me (IL related)
71 replies
Kat101 · 15/05/2013 19:41
OP posts:
LindyHemming ·
15/05/2013 19:45
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Message withdrawn at poster's request.
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