to think people being all judgey about others' lifestyles shouldn't count holidays as luxuries

[nutsandtangerines]

This summer, all being well, we will have a toddler and a newborn. It is becoming pretty clear we won't be able to afford to go on holiday.

I am so relieved.

WHY do people on here:

a. moan about others' (perhaps benefit-financed) holidays?
b. moan that they can't afford them themselves?

Holidays are HORRIFIC. You rush around at work in advance trying to get things stable enough that people won't spend the whole time you are away phoning you or bitching about you. Your life becomes an obsessive conveyor belt of laundry to get all the clothes you need washed and dried in time to pack. You pack. Your hands and nails flake and snag as you stuff things into too small bags at 3 in the morning. You weep. You go to bed. You get up and attempt to clean the house in the 3 and half minutes between everyone finishing breakfast and leaving the house. You accept that you are going to come back to filth. You leave. You realise you have forgotten to turn things off. You have forgotten some medication, and the charger for your camera. You drive for a day. Child(ren) whinge. You arrive. It is raining. It is cold. There is nothing to eat. Everyone is hungry. You make a horrible meal out of emergency indredients that you would never eat at home. It is rejected. There are hungry tears. You wash up in a tiny sink that splashes water all over your front. You have hardly any tops left because you simply did not have the energy to force any more into the case over all the nappies and the man clothes that are already in there. you put the child(ren) to bed. They don't sleep. You run up and down the stairs after them for a few hours. You drink as much as possible when they finally seem to have dropped off. Go to bed. DP snores. Don't sleep. Child(ren) wake up at 5.30 and don't know where they are and cry. It is raining. What on earth are you going to do for 14 hours until you are allowed to put child(ren) back in bed and start drinking again? You begin the sysiphean task of stopping the toddler breaking its neck on the completely open stairs. This will dominate your existence for the next 7 days. Everyone is hungry. There is nothing to eat.

Etc.

Eventually you are allowed to go home where you immediately succumb to a horrific virus because you are exhausted. If you have a job you can take days off sick because you have an illness policy and a childminder. This feels like the best thing that has ever happened in your whole life. If you are on maternity leave you will wish you were dead for another 7 - 10 days while normal life continues amongst the laundry generated by the holiday.

This summer it looks like we won't be able to afford to get away anywhere. Should anything change this position I will be HIDING the money in a secret account and INSISTING that we will just have to do some family day trips instead.

AIBU?

Taffeta: re restaurant food daily, Don't you find it too rich (fatty), too salty, too over-priced, too easy to over-order, and then there's the chore of keeping one's children well-behaved each time while you wait and wait to be served....

OP - yes you can get 'family suite type things' and depending on where you go they don't cost an arm and a leg - certainly less than two rooms.

We never stay somewhere where DH and I are going to be trying to read by torchlight after we've put DS to bed - that's no fun and we would be better off at home.

I love not having to think about what I'm going to eat until I sit down and look at a menu, I love not having to clear up. Bliss.

ragged - depends where you are eating I guess, but most menus have lighter/healthier options on them IME. Especially if you are in the Med somewhere.

Nutsandtangerines - loved your OP, made me chuckle!

Firstly, go abroad the weather is better

In answer to your qs:

How do you stay in a hotel with children? I mean... if you share a room with them you have no adult time, and if they are say, 2 and 4 (looking ahead a couple of years) they can't have a room on their own, can they? Are there kind of ... family suite type things? do they cost an arm and a leg?

We stayed in a hotel with a family room, and (this is the crucial bit) a balcony. DDs (aged 1.5 and 3) slept in the daytime for a bit, I read on the balcony. We took a laptop loaded with films for the evening too (didn't get round to watching any though!).

How do you go to the restaurant when they are asleep (surely the point is that you eat and drink while they are asleep) - do you get a babysitter?

We took our double buggy, let them run ragged in the day then conked out in the buggy for a couple of hours. We could then take them to the restaurant with us (wasn't comfortable with the idea of babysitters). Worked a treat. The hotel was v family friendly, so we could go for a few drinks and the kiddies would run around making friends, they loved it and we got to kick-back with a few drinks.

What do people normally spend on a modest-but-nice holiday abroad with two little children? (not babies - looking ahead)

We went to Egypt at peak time, and spent around 2.5K. I am sure you could get this far cheaper at non-peak times.

We also bought a v small suitcase and crammed it full of stickers, choc buttons, colouring pens etc for the flight. Portable DVD would have been fab had we got one for the 3 yr old. 1.5yr old just walked up and down the aisles of the plane a lot

I agree with others - all-inclusive all the way, no way in hell I am cooking on holiday.

YABU

Holidays are what you make of them. I never went abroad as a child but still remember great holidays, we were on the beach in all weather.

You either need to adjust your holidays or adjust your expectations.

We always go self-catered, because there's the flexibility to stay in or go out to eat but self catered doesn't have to mean cooking every night or at all. And actually I hate eating out every night, I find it too much and sometimes just long for cheese on toast or something equally basic.

ragged - never go to the same restauarnt twice! My DC are a bit older ( 4 and 7 ) and because we go out to restaurants so araely at home, its a big deal for them and they are generally well behaved.

As for the food, in France last summer, we varied it a lot, had a lot of fresh fish, moules etc, mixed up with the odd pizza and so on. DH has a very odd obsession with not overordering and he is a human goat that hoovers up all DC's leftovers, so I just leave that to him. I order the wine.

I enjoy the wide range of food that's available at Glasto, and because I have to travel light, I can't take a stove and food. But it's awesome because you can get everything from exotic food to burgers, from vegan to meat with everything, and I was over the moon to find the Children's Cafe, where I got sausage, egg, beans and chips - YOM!

Oh OP - are you trying to convince yourself you don't want one. It isn't that bad. Though I do recall our first holiday with a toddler and new born was in a lovely cottage near the Kent Coast with the PILs and 20 mins from my mum! Together with DH they all had days out and looked after DS and I lounged about in the garden or on the sofa breastfeeding and having a little read. Was bliss.

The next year we rented a cottage near my mum's (on the coast) for four weeks and the DH had a week at the beginning and a week at the end and semi commuted in the middle.

After that was Cornwall self catering cottages - brilliant best hols ever with children - so much for them to do even when the weather's bad.

...And now they're growing up and the buckets and spades have gone for ever.

Go with other people. Share cooking that way and have evening company and extra hands!

lovelyopaque that's exactly what we do and we have a fab time. It helps that 3 of us like cooking and the other one likes cleaning.

It's a shame you don't enjoy your holidays, for us it's the only time we get to totally escape from the stresses of real life.

We make a big deal of holidays because both DH and I have very stressful job ad work long hours ( poor DH is still working away just now - he's logged on at home and I only got in 40 mins ago :()

We started doing a variety of different holidays when DD was a wee baby but fell in love with Disney when she was two and most of our holidays since then (7 years ago) have either been WDW in Florida or Disney Cruises - Disney really know how to make holidays stress free and it's escapism in it's purest form.

We've done all kinds of holidays though and there are a lot of hotels in the UK and Europe that have fantastic kids facilities.

Our trick is to just relax, leave all our stresses behind and be kids again for two weeks.

Cheap holiday cottage/static caravan in rainy UK, due to serious shortage of spare £2K and a family who all burn in the merest watery ray of sunshine?

Get earplugs, take it in turn to have a lie in (and stick to it), research the local area for soft play centres and swimming pools, go to a shit-load of castles (castles are bloody great), volunteer to do a laundrette trip so you get time to read/ go on Mumsnet/cry, eat naughty things you don't normally have (a day without cake, chips, icecream or a combination thereof is a day wasted), go on a train for a day trip, go to loads of petting zoos/farms, pack a week before you go, try not to get divorced or fall off the wagon.

I have surprisingly fond memories of last summer, which is odd considering I read your post and thought, "When did I write this?". But, looking back.on it, we had some great times. It was character-building.

Sorry, not v useful. But it's nice to know it's not just me. Pass the bottle.

I love our holidays - Devon every other eyar in the same cottage I first went to in 1985 - we know where everything is and it's still 'away'. No mobile phone signal, no Internet, no-one contacting us - but can be reached in an emergency. As for cleaning the house before leaving - pah! Our house is always as clean as it will ever be, that is, not.

Buckets and spades and rock pools, long walks on the moors, Exmoor Zoo and other attractions - it's no effort keeping the DCs occupied, and there's always the indoor badminton court if the weather doesn't play ball and they need exercise.

It's all about expectations.

Sorry but I loved caravanning in wales as a kid, My parents enjoyed it as well and I have some great memories and lovely times. (we ended up moving to wales when I was 16)

I don't understand why people hate caravans so much, much more comfier than a tent, and if you get onto a very quiet site where no more than five caravans are allowed then its great, kids can actually play

I'm doing the 9.50 sun holiday with my 4 and my friend is coming too with her 3, all i can afford this year.

But I'm looking forward it. dp is staying at home, thats his holiday!

Thanks everyone, you have really cheered me up.

It doesn't matter anyway this year because we're broke but I am beginning to put together a mental check list of how a holiday might be fun again. I still think that it is a good idea to give the idea a rest for a while though.

I still think cottages are better than hotels, so you can watch DVDs and drink wine in the evenings. Maybe even hold hands (without the interference of the Junior Anti Sex League). So I am going to carry on pestering you with pesky questions: I would happily eat chorizo, olives, bread and salad every night. What can veggies reasonably eat which is a similarly lazy equivalent of this? (DP is veggie. Veggie food always seems to involve Cooking.)

btw to all those self righteous people sniffing that I must adjust my expectations, my expectations of holidays have always been, at least materially, by some people's standards pitifully low. My childhood family holidays probably cost the equivalent, adjusted for inflation, of £100 for 3 weeks for the lot of us. My teenage holidays involved spending 48 hours at a time on coaches and ferries rewinding tapes with a pencil to save Walkman batteries because some eejit had put Super Tramp on the other side of The Stone Roses. I have spent a lot of time very happily walking around in the rain and sitting in draughty cottages drinking tea. However the last few times I have been away, attempting to do my Barbara Good cheerful jeans and jumper jolly-in-the-rain style thing (with a much fatter arse) I have spent the whole time fending off tears of exhaustion. So don't lecture me about "expectations" unless you mean "expect to chuck a whole lot of money at the problem and holiday in sunshine admidst good restaurants". Which would be adjusting my expectations. And income.

lol @ Barbara Good with a fat arse

Food q: Cheese. With your stuff minus the chorizo, add some sunblush toms, peppadews, spicy chutneys etc. Good bread etc.

? don't understand, altinkum

What holidays have you been going on then?

OMG, your glass seems to be more than half empty!
You clearly don't look forward to a change from the old routine, so probably shouldn't bother with holidays.

Our DD is 3 and loves going on holiday, airports, flying etc, we make it an adventure (plus I think she has inherited my judith chalmers travel gene which helps!)

you could rent a caravan or chalet, they are usually well equipped with standard size sinks and no stairs.

Maybe yabu, surely your DP deserves a break too?

Even when we stay in UK it is still different to home - no ironing, no cleaning, no washing, days out every day, eating out, no phone going. Swim in the sea - even if it's cool at first! Makes me happy! Mind you, I love a rainy picnic too.