How do people manage sleeping arrangements?

[Clouds3898]

This year we travelled to the other side of the country with a toddler and a baby to spend Christmas with my husband's wider family. There were 20 people at his Nan's on Christmas day so we stayed in a rented house nearby. The logistics didn't really work v well - lots of back and forth, managing baby's naps, nowhere to sit, v cramped etc. It was v stressful and then took 10 hours to get back on Tuesday due to a combo of awful traffic and stopping for baby feeds, toddler toilet trips etc

Next year we've decided to stay at home. Because it's my family's year we will invite my parents to stay so they will sleep in our spare room. To keep the peace we thought we'd invite DH's immediate family - mum, sis and bro in law too but there's no space at ours for them to stay. There's local accommodation - premier Inn (15 mins walk away) and Airbnb flats etc v local within a few minutes walk. But then they have to do the crap staying somewhere else thing we've done this year. Is that just what people do at Christmas? Growing up my family all lived nearby so we just went for the day

We live at least 2 hours away from family and this Christmas stayed with both sets of families across a two week period HOWEVER I'm on mat leave (first child), my partner had a decent amount of leave, and since we're both children of divorce there were plenty of spare rooms for us to use if DP needed to sleep seperately to me and baby at any point.

While DS is still very young I think we'll probably spend Christmas at my parents or in-laws, but agree that at some point in the next few years we'll want him to wake up in his own bed on Christmas morning. I would be happy to host on Christmas Day but as children of divorce it gets very tricky. Maybe I need go start a thread about that 😂

Just don't make such a big deal of one day. We see my dad and his partner for a day around Christmas, my mum and her husband and my siblings another, and then my husband's family whenever works. Some of his more random extended family have fallen off the edges but that's healthy imho.

Much nicer for everyone and especially with young kids as they don't get overwhelmed.

I don't understand those who want to cut out everyone else and just spend time with their "own little family" as it's described several times upthread (barf).

Unless your family are all complete gits surely seeing each other is one of the biggest pleasures of christmas, even if it is a bit uncomfortable for a day or two?

TBH I wouldn’t invite people if there’s not enough room for them to sit/sleep in reasonable comfort. Children and teens are usually fine with beds made up on bedroom floors, as long as there’s enough padding, but I will no longer rough it myself, and don’t expect any other adults to.
I second the good old P Inn, if there’s one close by. We’ve always found them very good.

3 bed mid terrace. We had dad in one child’s bed, mum in other child’s bed (they are divorced so separate rooms), kids on a mattress on the floor next to mum, my brother on sofa bed and us in our bed. If parents were not divorced they would be in our bed and we would take the children beds.

Oh abd we had uncle for Christmas lunch too - our table expands from 4 to 10 / 12. So all had a dining chair at a dining table.

Here's a question (that I don't really know the answer to 🤣) if family invite you for Christmas but don't have room for you to stay overnight, should you pay for hotel accommodation or family?

This could be us in a few years!

@Calphurnia88 I would assume the family or guests who are staying in the hotel would usually pay for this, this is what we have done (on other visits) and I much preferred to have some time on our own.

Unless say the other family doing the inviting were extremely wealthy or more comfortably off and when they extended the invitation said something like ‘…come to us for Christmas unfortunately we don’t really have enough room for you all to comfortably stay here, unless you all want to squash in…but if you don’t want to we will pay for you to stay a couple of nights in X hotel/Premier Inn etc. Let us know.

I’d pay for the accommodation, or else stay at home. We did this recently - in fact there would have been room at the house in theory, but I’m past the stage of being able to share a standard double bed with dh, and since we’re both of a certain age we’re up and down in the night so def. want an en-suite - avoids disturbing other people with flushing.