I posted this in another thread, but it's a better fit here:
I had a reply I was going to give, but when I got home from work, I saw that the thread had been locked. So I'll post it here.
I respect your point of view on the matter and if that's how you feel and you have fun on your trips, then that's great.
But there is another way to look at it as well, and it includes not thinking of it as "foisting your kids" off on anyone. The way I look at it is that most grandparents love to have their grandkids for a week. I don't know your family situation, whether your parents or ex in-laws are still living or not. Or if they are, for all I know they may live next door to you and get to see their grandkids all they want. But in my case, both sets of my grandparents lived more than an hour away and it was a real treat to be able to see them. I remember many times staying for a week with my maternal grandparents and those are some great childhood memories. Sitting outside on the swing with grandpa, or fishing with Grandma in their pond. Grandpa taking us for rides on his tractor and staying up late playing "Aggravation" with Grandma. I have wonderful memories of my grandparents and the times I was able to spend with them. And I was very excited about the prospect of my kids having the same experiences with their grandparents. I very much looked forward to my kids growing up and having Christmases, Thanksgivings, etc, with their grandparents. I very much looked forward to my kids, like my brother and I, being able to go down to the farm and spend a week or so with my parents. My wife's parents live about 5 minutes away and babysit our son on Mondays and Tuesdays, so they see him all the time. But my parents lived about an hour from us and didn't get to see our son as often as we would have liked.
Anyway, regarding our 2007 WDW trip, not only did the wife and I want to spend it without the responsibilities of tending to an infant, but I was also very excited about my son being able to spend a week with my parents and start the memories off from an early age. Not that he would remember the experience any better than he would the Disney trip had he gone, but it would be a good memory for my parents, of having their first grandchild for a week. My mother was very excited about being a grandma for the first time and looked forward to having our son for a week and taking him to church and showing off her new grandchild. See, it isn't about "foisting" him off on some unwilling poor sap. It's about the granparents having the joy of spending a whole week with their only grandchild and being able to "spoil him rotten and send him back home" as they say. :lol:
Well, the trip was in April of 2007 and, unfortunately, my parents were in a car wreck in Novemeber of 2006 and my Mom died. Ya know how many times she got to have her grandson over for the night? Once. That was it. My inlaws went on vacation in October, so my parents had our son for the days that my in-laws would have watched him. So my son was born on May 2, Mom died Dec 1 and in the short amount of time that she got to know her grandson, she got to have him over to her house ONE TIME. When my wife was pregnant in 2005, we got each of our mothers a plaque for Christmas that said "Grandma's Kitchen", which my mother had hanging in her kitchen. I was over there one day after she died and it was still hanging there as a reminder that my son would never get to be in Grandma's kitchen like I was growing up. He will grow up without his grandma, without the memories that I have, and my mother barely got to know her first grandson before she was taken from us. She was so excited about the first Christmas with two new family members: my son and my brother's new wife. But she died before that first Christmas ever got here.
We then changed the plan so that Connie's parents watched him while we were gone. We left for Florida on Sunday morning and we went to Dad's house on Saturday night to drop off the dog. There was sadness in my heart on the way there and back, knowing that this wasn't how it was supposed to be. The original plan was that on Saturday, the wife, the dog, the baby and I would ALL go to MOM and Dad's house, stay all night, then leave Sunday while Mom and Dad have our baby and the dog for the week. Mom was to take the baby to church and show him off and then have a whole week to spoil him as grandma's love to do.
As I said, it didn't happen and now it never will. My son will not be able to have the memories of all his grandparents growing up as my brother and I do. I only have one memory of us going to Disney as a family when I was 11 years old (check my signature), but I have plenty of memories of spending weekends or full weeks with my grandparents and those are some wonderful memories. Important memories, possibly as important, if not more so, than Disney trips.
So, with all due respect, think about it that way instead of thinking of it as "foisting" your kids off on someone. If your parents are anything like my grandparents and parents, I doubt they think of it that way, either.
