Before I start, I know people will say boo-hoo, teachers' holidays are long enough, and I'm sorry if what I say is annoying for anyone.
My dc are in Y11 and Y13 and I am a teacher. For a few years we have been planning a USA trip for this summer as they've never been outside of Europe and this is obviously a big year for them. As I'm a teacher we can't take advantage of their long summer break in full but obviously have the 6 weeks (or so I thought), though they were clear 2.5 weeks was their max as I'm divorced and they need to factor in time with dad and downtime too.
Anyway, my school has moved to having 5 weeks off over the summer and 2 weeks in October, which would still be fine, except I don't break up until Tues 29th July (my last day) and ds1 is adamant about being back for A level results day on Thurs 14th August, which I fully understand. That gives us a scant 2 weeks Weds - Weds. We live a couple of ours away from London, which is where the best value flights leave from.
We were planning a few days each in NYC and Washington DC and then a mini road-trip to Virginia to see some of the colonial sights before circling back to DC to fly home. One dc would like to see some mountains too if possible. DC have very specific interests and desires and it was quite hard finding a trip that would suit them both and now I feel some things will have to be cut. I'm also not thrilled about having to leave the day after I break up from school - realistically will have to go down to London on the Tuesday night itself in fact. I'm always absolutely wiped out at the end and need a week or at least a few days to recover before packing etc.
Does this even sound doable or should we either cut it, postpone it by a year (will NOT be popular, esp for ds2 and I worry ds1 will make his own plans the following year), or do I try and persuade ds1 to be away for results day (I probably won't be able to).