Not to want to accompany DH and kids to the inlaws this Christmas?

[Anycrispsleft]

DH wants to go and see his parents during the Christmas holiday this year. They live in a different country to us, and we haven't seen them for 3 years. We had been planning to go and visit them this Christmas, but since then:

I've got a job! Massive news for me, as I didn't think I would ever get back into my old industry, and I've landed this brilliant, family friendly, short commute job, but it's going to be really demanding to start off with, and we've yet to figure out how we're going to cover the kids' holidays.

• MIL phoned and told us they are coming back to their home country (near to us) to visit everyone next month and they will look in on us for 3 or 4 days.

I said to DH this evening that I thought I would sit out the after Christmas visit, and get back to work instead, as I will now see the inlaws this month anyway. DH seemed miffed at this, saying "but I'll have the kids alone for the winter holidays too!" (there's a week's holiday in February).

AIBU to think he's going to have to get used to this? We have 5 weeks' holidays each a year. The kids have 14 weeks off school. If we take holidays off together for 2 weeks in the summer and the three days during Christmas, and use the rest of our holidays to look after the kids alone, that should cover about 7 weeks of their 14. Holiday schemes here are a bit patchy and most of them didn't run in corona times. I don't think my inlaws will bother at all about not seeing me, it's DH and the kids they will want to see.

@FangsForTheMemory

If he's so far managed to avoid looking after the kids on his own because you were working, he's done pretty well out of it hasn't he? Half their childhood is gone, they no longer need constant attention and in five years' time they'll be big enough to leave at home on their own. I'd point that out to him.

This.

I think it’s a good idea. You get to have ‘me’ time after the Xmas rush and you can prioritise work for a bit.

Well, a decision of sorts has been made: he's going to wait and see how annoying his parents are when they are visiting us, and then decide whether to go at Christmas

At least he seems to have copped on to the fact that we will have to take it in turns to look after the kids in the holidays. He sat down with the holiday timetable and counted up how many weeks they have, how many weeks we have, and how many days we could afford to take together if we manage to get summer holiday childcare. Never mind I did all this on Sunday night and told him the answers!

Wait till he finds out that end of term Frudays are usually half days

When my In-laws were alive my DH would take DD to see them in Cornwall - usually a week at Easter. I’d do a week with my sister away somewhere and he’d go to his folks. I can’t tell you how great it was to have a week to myself. Sadly they’re no longer alive so I can’t imagine he’ll be going away anywhere now. Over summer we normally have 2 weeks together in the summer, use a holiday club for 2 weeks and then my sister/ mum have DD for a few days. She sometimes goes to them at half term too. I think swapping days with friends is a good idea too.

I might ask one of the other mums if she wants to swap some days - we've had each other's kids for "summer school" this summer holiday, 4 days at mine, 4 days at hers. We managed to cover off my interview and her professional exam that way.