My wife and I often laugh about how her parents live on the west coast, mine live on the east coast, and we settled right in the middle of the country. It wasn’t a conscious choice; work brought us here, so we built a life, had kids, and absolutely love it. Both sets of parents, however, accuse us of plotting to move to a place that would put us as far away as possible from all of them. (When I told my mother that if this was the case, we’d have uprooted the family and moved to New Zealand, she did not find my joke funny.)
When we fly home to visit my parents, we’re also in the same town as our alma mater (my wife and I met at college) and like to visit with friends while we’re there. Because of this, no matter how much they offer and insist, we prefer to rent a car instead of having my folks pick us up at the airport.
Car rentals can get pricey if we visit for a couple of weeks over the holidays, though. This sent my wife hunting online for savings. She was able to find amazing Avis rental car coupons, so that’s who we book with whenever we fly back east. Having a rental allows us to have a few nights where we leave the kids with their grandparents so that my wife and I can go out and wax college nostalgic over drinks with friends. We get adult time out and no one asks how much ice cream the kids ate while we were gone; a good time is had by all.
Because my wife’s parents live nearly three hours away from their nearest airport, we also use Avis car rental discounts whenever we travel out to visit them. Two six-hour round trips to pick us up and drop us off again is no joke, so we rent a car and enjoy the scenery along the coast as we make the journey to their house. It also frees us up if we want to take the kids to go do things and give her parents some quiet time. It’s sort of a shock to lead quiet, grandparent-ly lives and suddenly have a 4-year-old and a 7-year-old descend upon your house. Grandparents get tired. I live with these little creatures all the time. I get it.
The car rental discounts also pay off whenever either set of grandparents comes to stay with us to babysit. No; they don’t rent a car when they’re here. They use our car to take us to the airport so that we can fly somewhere far from our children and then we rent a car when we arrive at our quiet, peaceful, peanut-butter-and-jelly-free destination. Even the best of parents need a break from time to time.
So despite the distance, it all works out. And there are no plans to move to New Zealand, Mom. Didn’t mean to upset you.
