I hate our holiday and want to go home

Also I do feel a bit sorry for SIL! I would not want to have to drive my visiting family around for a whole week while juggling school pickup.

Also why would you live anywhere where your holiday entitlement is so meagre

Fuck that, life is for living and holidays, not work

Why is hunting an important skill?

If you don't like the water buy some filter jugs, they're not very expensive

Ugh....grim

I hate the UK
I hate the water
I hate the pollution

Moan moan

Why is shooting annimportant skill??
Because you live somewhere where the constant threat of being shot is in everyone's head

Not such a great place

UK is beautiful, get out there and show your kids all the beautiful old villages and cities you miserable toad

15 days vacation allowance a year??? Give me the UK any day.

What an utterly grim thing to teach young children. It is anything but an important skill in any western country.

Try these
coral reef bracknell
the look out bracknell
rock climbing craggy island Guildford
laser quest at runabout farnborough
clip n climb camberley

Sorry I think you are BU. Of course you are entitled to a fun and relaxing holiday, everyone is, but you have brought the situation on yourself to a degree.

When you move abroad (especially USA) you have to accept that you will a) have much less holiday b) have to use a decent portion of that holiday visiting / hosting family c) have to travel back home, especially as parents get older and find it more difficult to travel. I get it’s frustrating, my DB and family are in the US so I know, but it’s the choice you make.

So, how to make the best of it? As others have said, plan! Hiring a car is a must but Surrey is beautiful, so much woodland and AONB, loads of outdoor activities, beaches in reasonable distance. Yes the weather is not the best but as long as you are prepared you can work around it. As for feeling like you have to sit around MIL/SILs house, fuck that, I would just announce I’m off to do X with the family and they can come (or not!) - even if you have lots of days out and don’t see them in the day you’d still see plenty of them. We visited DB and family in the US for 3 weeks, stayed with them, but
hired a car and planned separate stuff and we still saw loads of them. We did activities together too, but no one wants to be in each others pockets for 3 weeks straight.

So next time just make a proper plan, tell MIL what you are doing (tell, not ask) and you will have a much better time.

And stop complaining about the water, that’s just silly. When we were in the US all the water was filtered even at home because the taste straight from the tap is odd. You just need to deal with it!

Hunting for fun (rather than for food) is disgusting.

Do you yearn to go to Africa to shoot giraffe as well? You’re so brave!

I get that you don't want to be here, but as lots of other people have said you seem determined to make it as awful as possible. You're behaving as if you have no agency at all to make plans, create an interesting itinerary or just get out for a day. All these things are in your control. You're about an hour on the train from one of the world's great cities; get into London and hit some of the free museums etc even if it's too late to organise anything further afield. I'd go spare just sitting in someone else's house as well!

Hire a car. Get a bus or train. Stop being so dependent. Nothing worse than a whinger who just sits around moaning while doing nothing to improve the situation.

On car hire Arnold Clark also do some good deals

You have a standard DH problem, and a defeatist attitude. Perfect storm. He can shoot, hunt, and fish, which are super essential - but can’t look after his own kids. You can’t communicate to him or compromise with him, in a way where you can actually enjoy your holiday. You take no initiative, and never in ten years has this place inspired you to plan properly. You were coming with him every year, as I understand it, before you had two kids under 5. I’m a lone parent and I’ve take my kids all over the world, tell him to get a grip. I can’t hunt, though 🙄

Go to Chessington world of adventures

kids under 5 so probably travel free on buses https://www.surreycc.gov.uk/roads-and-transport/buses-and-other-transport/bus-timetables/maps-of-routes-and-stops

Go and see some countryside.

Being held hostage by rigid dull in-laws, my god I feel for you.

Sending support, I'd have hit the bottle by now.

This protestation is constantly being wheeled out, on in-law threads in particular. I'm unsure as to its exact endgame, other than to suggest the issue is all on the OP. It's lazy reasoning not to mention irrelevant: a cousin of 'I couldn't get worked up about that'. We are not required to like everyone, any more than we are able to make them like us. This really isn't the end of the world.

OP's precise problem on this occasion is that she's been too accommodating, not insufficiently so.

If she's that bothered about seeing her grandkids she can get on a plane

This sounds like the best plan - come less frequently but get an airbnb and hire car?

I wonder where your sister in laws thread is? I bet she well looks forward to you rocking up

Agree!

@Backwoods57 next year or better in 2 years time your kids will be older and easier to manage

and there is literally no reason why your H could not handle bringing the kids by himself. Countless single parents do this kind of stuff all the time. It’s not impossible. He just doesn’t WANT to have all the work to himself.

manage his expectations and say you’re not doing this again. That if you have to come over it won’t be to stay with SIL, and be dependent on her, it’ll be Airbnb or whatever and a hire car. If that means your family comes over less often. So be it.

I think had you done some planning, if you’d had a car etc you might have felt a lot different about it all.

there ARE plenty of places to visit, but it’s far better if you are not dashing back for this that and the other, and things like a network rail card or similar can save you 30% on train fares off peak so if you’re going further afield a couple of times the discount pays for the £30 card Itself

I'd suggest coming less frequently but with a bigger budget. Also later in the year for better weather if you can, I'm not sure what school terms are like in the US. There are some fantastic free museums in London, the West Sussex beaches are great (a PP mentioned West Wittering), you're not far from Legoland. Every 2 or 3 years might feel more manageable too.

We moved to the USA in 2014 and have to come back every year because ....

Stopping you there, OP. No. You really, really don't.

However, once a precedent has been set it's more difficult to break in the first instance. You're going to have to be prepared for - and impervious to - pushback. It will be hard pushback to begin with, and you'll simply need to ride it out. Remember that you can't change others' behaviour, only your own.

I can't recommend Susan Forward's Toxic In-Laws highly enough: she provides al manner of gentle, low-conflict strategies for dealing with just such situations as these. Grey rock is your friend.

This needs a hard line in the sand now. Unfortunately the only person who can draw that line, since it seems your partner will not, is you.

US holiday entitlements tend to be much less generous than British ones. An indefinite sentence of expending yours like this - every single year? - is far beyond a reasonable expectation. As for this year, I really don't blame you for wanting to go home. In your shoes I think I would.