Visiting grandparents

[Heffalumps]

Hi there, I hope you may be able to help.
I am a single parent with a DD in Y6, I work full time and my DM and DSD live about 120 miles away. DM has health issues and they do not come to visit here, so it's down to us to travel to see them. (She us quite demanding and time consuming due to her health)
I am in a quandary as I am under quite a lot of pressure to visit them, which I would love to do more often but find it difficult to due to needing to sort out the practical stuff at the weekend...clean, food shop, DD has clubs etc and the weekend is also when she sees her dad or her friends
We always visit in the holidays for 3-7 days at a time, and multiple visits in the summer, but we are not visiting in this 1/2 term break...my daughter has a friend staying over, we are seeing friends, have dentist appts etc....
Could I ask your opinion or how often you & DC see grandparents who live a distance/long drive away?

Many thanks, and apologies if rambling!

Sounds quite a lot considering that you parents live a distance away - my parents used to live 300 miles away and we would visit them twice a year and they would visit us twice a year (on average). We certainly didn't spend every school holiday with them.

We live 200 miles from my parents and they are not in great health. We see them about four times a year but we speak on the phone almost daily.

My kids see my parents 3 or 4 times a year - we visit once for a week or 8/9 days, my parents visit (sort of - they holiday near where we live and last time I had an hour each way on the train to take the kids to them each day) for 3-4 days 2 or 3 times per year.

If my parents genuinely couldn't visit us I'd try to take the kids to them twice a year, not more.

We live about 800 miles away - a 2 hour flight but the problem is more having to hire a car at the other end to get from the airport to their rural part of northern UK. The cost of the whole thing with 3 kids is high and door to door the journey is about 8 hours each way if we fly or 12 hours drive and an overnight ferry if we drive.

We see PIL every school holiday - we almost always go to them. They are about an hours drive. Sometimes they come to us in between - only if there's a special reason like kid's birthday or first day of school. We go to them for their birthdays, otherwise never in term time. So we probably end up seeing them every 6 month to6 weeks.

I think every holiday is eminently reasonable in your case.

Thank you so much to you all for taking the time to reply- appreciated
So, each 'big' holiday with a couple of times in the Summer seems reasonable....4 times a year?
I'm just adjusting to being a single parent toowell, about 8 months inso it's all a bit new and quite hard work balancing it all, especially with my job...I think I'm suffering from a dose of guilt about it all, not helped by a pressurising mum!
Thank you

It sounds like you visit as much as you possibly can - perhaps more than you absolutely have to. Don't feel guilty about having your half term to yourselves, it sounds like you need some time to genuinely relax and your DD needs chill out time too.

Do your parents have computers - could you facetime them?

My parents live about an hour away and we see them roughly once every 6 weeks, but it's a lot easier when you can do a 4 hr visit rather than an overnight one.

Thank you Rookie- I think it'd be a lot more manageable if it didn't mean an overnight stay- I don't think I'd be very good company going there & back in a day!
I'm feeling like I am not being quite so unreasonable- thank you all.