Post by redpenmama on Sept 11, 2023 6:56:50 GMT -5
A few times a year but we live 800 miles apart, so we have limited opportunities. We make an effort to get the cousins together when we are visiting, which is normally twice a year.
Post by starburst604 on Sept 11, 2023 7:28:53 GMT -5
I have one sister and she lives about 40 minutes away. I’d say on average she sees my kid and me hers maybe every 6 weeks? We both have kids with busy activity schedules so it’s challenging but we make it a point to attend their football games a couple of times a season and she’ll come to see DD play soccer. Then the other times are gatherings with our parents for various holidays and bdays.
H’s sister OTOH also has 3 busy kids but she puts in the extra effort and they are very close with DD. She also lives 40 minutes away but we see them almost weekly and DD has sleepovers there a lot. She and H have always been very close. It’s funny because I always assumed we would name my sister her guardian in the event of our deaths, but we actually named SIL the guardian. That is who she feels really at home with.
We see my H's sister and her kids probably once or twice a month, sometimes more in the summer, but they only live 25 minutes away. My brother lives across the country in CA so we only see him once or twice a year. He hasn't been home since having his 1 year old and I can't afford to go out there every year if I want to take any other vacations lol.
We see my middle sister and her family anywhere from 2-4 times a month depending on kid schedules, but they're local to us. Our youngest sister lives out of town and the nature of her job makes it difficult for her to fly/drive up here often and for us to make the trip down to her to visit, so we see her a few times a year but Facetime at least a couple times a month.
One of my SILs lives a couple hours away but we see her maybe a handful of times a year, and other SIL just moved back to our city from the East Coast so between her coming to see her niece and nephew play sports and just getting together in general we're seeing her roughly once a week.
Only a few times a year, but that's because we live 4 hours apart and only get together every two months or so. I talk to my sister daily, and if she was local it would likely be at least once a week.
I'm the one (so far) who chose daily. But we have unique circumstances in that my sister is also my next door neighbor. And her son is obsessed with my children and every single day is begging to see his cousins. So even if it's just a wave in passing, we're seeing each other and each other's kids daily.
We live halfway across the country from my sister; we see her 3-4x a year. I have no relationship with my half-brother; my kids have never even met him.
My SIL is local; we usually see her once a week. She comes to pretty much all of the kids' events.
My brother uses my parents house as his home address. When he is local, he sees my kids weekly but it's usually literally just "seeing" them. Like the other day we spotted him as we were leaving their house and he was walking home from somewhere. He had his phone attached to his head and was on a call and gave DS a wave and a smile.
When he's not local it will be months before we see him. We are going on a cruise in November and he is going with us. He booked a room for himself + my parents. The kids are beyond excited to hang out with him for a week. Given his long history of viewing confirmed travel reservations as merely suggestions, I'm not 100% sure that he will actually show up on the boat. However, I think it's finally hitting him that the time we have left to make happy memories with the kids and our parents is not infinite and the guilt will get to him.
Post by InBetweenDays on Sept 11, 2023 11:24:40 GMT -5
My sister lives a ferry ride away so that can mean it can take an hour or it can take 3-hours to get there. Depending on traffic and ferry wait times. On average I'd say we see them 8-10 times a year.
My siblings live about an hour away and DD sees them every few weeks and they text back and forth.
DH's brother lives 3 hours away and the last time we saw him and his wife/kid was the Christmas before COVID. They refuse to travel to us even thought BIL grew up here. Last time we were in their city they couldn't fit us into their schedule. They spend a ton of time with SIL very large family. DD gets very annoyed by the lack of relationship especially when they post stuff about cousin weekend.
I live in Seattle and my sister lives in Houston. We see each other in person a little less than once a year. Sometimes her family stops here on the way to visiting her husband's parents who live in rural BC. We plan some sort of family get together about once ever 1.5-2 years.
We Skype about once a month along with our dad.
msniq's family is all local-ish, but I would say we see most of her siblings once every 1-2 months. There's a big family get together every 2-3 months for *something*, and then we schedule coffee or bird watching or whatever about that often too. There's one sister who just moved back from Japan, and she has a daughter about O's age, so I think we'll see them more often.
Post by rootbeerfloat on Sept 11, 2023 14:44:06 GMT -5
My sister and I live in the same neighborhood. We're close, but busy, and the kids (teens for me, teen and toddler for her) have different schedules. So it might be every few weeks even though it could be way more often.
My brothers both live a plane ride away. One of them, I think would be here for birthday parties, sports, recitals, etc if he was local.
My sister lives about 2 hours away and sees my kids less than my brothers do. There’s a lot of family dynamics at play, but she’s a great aunt when she is around them, so I do wish they saw her more.
Post by ellipses84 on Sept 11, 2023 23:59:22 GMT -5
DH and I were super close with our cousins/aunts/uncles growing up and by some miracle my sisters and I have kids close in age (marriage / successful TTC didn’t happen in the timing we thought it would but it all worked out in the end). It was really important to me for our kids to have that similar cousin relationship and I didn’t know how that was going to happen when we lived a 6 hour flight and time zone difference away. Then a natural disaster resulted in us living with my family for a few months, the kids going to school with cousins and my siblings really stepped in to help me with the kids because DH had to stay in our old city for a while. That really cemented the closeness for my kids.
Now we live a 3 hour flight away and it’s about 3x per year for 1-2 week visits where we spend nearly every day together for 2 of my siblings. The other sibling doesn’t get along with them so we only see them about 1/3rd of that time. 2/3 visits it’s us flying to them. It used to suck spending most of our vacation time visiting but remote works means I can usually take half the time off and work half the time while my kids spend time with family. They’ve attended summer daycamp and swim lessons with cousins. I feel like the amount of quality time we get is as good or better than when I lived an hour away, pre-kids and we saw my nephews 1x per month at their house and maybe for sleepovers once every couple months at my house. I feel like I was a way better auntie before I had kids though; now I’m busy and forgetful.
I have a couple half and step siblings I rarely ever see, like once every few years if that and there’s not really a relationship there because they make no effort. DH’s family keeps up on social media but there’s distance and they make zero effort. He used to make a ton of effort but was pretty hurt when we had our own kids, and they didn’t reciprocate at all.
My sister is my best friend and lives about 6 miles away. We all see her at least once a month or more, and DD (11) goes for a sleepover about that often. She also takes her to activities (local free concerts, this weekend she's taking her to a salon for hair dying, etc). We also vacation with her and BIL for a week each year.
I know this is not the norm and our proximity is one reason we don't move. My two brothers are a 3hr drive away and five state flight away and DD only seems them 1-2x a year.
H's sibling is 1.5hr drive and DD sees them maybe once a year.
I live about 45 minutes from my family, but we get together close to once a month. Usually for birthdays or holidays, and sometimes just random get togethers. It's usually at my Mom's house because she is pretty central to everyone. My adult niece and my sister both live about 45 minutes to the east and I'm 45 minutes to the west, and my brother is 20 minutes to the south, so it makes sense to have most gtg's in a central location.
my sister lives 6 hours away so she sees him a few times a year. If she lived locally I know it would be at least once a week, as she loves him more than she loves me, lol.
my sister lives 6 hours away so she sees him a few times a year. If she lived locally I know it would be at least once a week, as she loves him more than she loves me, lol.
It's funny you say that - as DS has gotten older, we see BIL a lot more than we used to. For YEARS AND YEARS AND YEARS, when he'd come to visit FIL, we'd maybe be told, maybe not. He'd NEVER stop by our house on the way home (for about 11 years, we lived RIGHT off the highway that he took to go home).
But in the past couple years, he and his GF make much more of an effort to let us know when they are coming down and will now make more of a point to stop by on their way home (even though we're no longer RIGHT off the highway). I know it's largely because of DS. He's a cool kid and they want to see him and spend time with him!
DH's BIL will bring his son (my kids step cousin) to our area to see his parents, and when DH asks about it he was basically told to butt out and never ask and don't expect anything and how dare he ask. And I am sure his asking was not that forceful.
So I guess we are never seeing the step cousin even though SIL had made a big fuss originally that her parents had another grandkid and we originally set out when they were young to do kid activities together. Step cousin is a teenager now and probably doesn't care to see younger kids but you would think BIL might want to foster something, but nada. His parents don't talk to us and we are only an hour away which is fine, that family connection is nebulous, but they came to our town to have breakfast with DH's parents (who are a 5 hour drive away) and we were NOT invited. Who has breakfast in your town that no one else lives in and makes it a point to tell you not to come? Make it make sense. This was in response to ECB saying BIL would drive right by their house and not stop.
We live 20 mins away from my sister and her family and our kids are close in age and close in general. We see each other weekly (mostly for family dinner on Friday night or Saturday depending on the sports schedules for all the kids - we have 5 between us). We’re extremely close, so it’s natural that our kids are close, too.
my sister lives 6 hours away so she sees him a few times a year. If she lived locally I know it would be at least once a week, as she loves him more than she loves me, lol.
This is part of our problem. For a while, we were seeing her once a week. But it put a serious strain on our sibling relationship to have her enmeshed in our lives like that. She loves the kids more than she loves anyone else, but I don’t want it interrupting our family dynamic like this.
Post by midwestmama on Sept 18, 2023 9:33:25 GMT -5
My sister lives a little over an hour away, but we only see each other around major holidays and birthdays. She and I generally aren't very close. (I voted based on my sister.)
SIL lives 1,000+ miles away (and refuses to travel to see family, she always makes them come visit her), so that's self-explanatory.
Post by icedcoffee on Sept 18, 2023 18:48:44 GMT -5
A few times a year. I had kids first and that’s the precedent she set. We are relatively close so that surprised me and used to bother me. Now she has kids too but I feel like the cadence was set. And her H is a lot so I try not to spend too much time with him.
My H wasn’t as close to his brother but we see them quite a bit. Usually at least monthly and our kids are quite close.
My husband's one brother saw DS maybe 2-3 times a year. MIL lived near or with him until she died, so we would sometimes stay with her so they could travel. DH's other brother was living overseas and we might see him every 3 years or so. We see more of him now that DS is older. DS is surprising connected to his uncles.
Post by shamrockshake on Sept 24, 2023 20:00:49 GMT -5
We have dinner weekly with my family who lives close by (parents and two brothers/ their families) Three other siblings live far away, one we see once a year, one we see every other month roughly (neither of them have kids), and my sister, who I am closest with we see 4/5 times a year but we FaceTime with her kids at least every week.
my husband’s bother and wife live 5 minutes from us and we see them like 4x a year. They have no kids and don’t seem interested in ours. Which is fine. But my family is all up in each others business lol
I am an only child but my H has 3 sisters. They are all in different places in their lives than we are so we only see them if we go up to his dad's house and they happen to be there. They are all local enough to visit but they don't, and to be fair we don't make much of an effort to visit them either.
Our kids have lots of "aunts" and "uncles" who are our close friends though.
Post by pinkdutchtulips on Sept 25, 2023 16:09:13 GMT -5
My closest sibling (baby sis) is 2h away so she sees Miss R a few times a year - usually for her kids' bday parties. The last time she saw ALL of her aunts/uncles/cousins was at our gpa's 100th bday party in Feb. 2023. Prior to that there was a family reunion in which 3/4 of my siblings were there in June 2022.
There are 4 of us spread out between CA (Bay Area and Sacto area), WY, and MI. We don't get together all that often bc of logistics.