My brother in law is getting married in New York this summer and my husband and I would like to attend. Here are our options:
1: fly husband and myself up there over the weekend taking our baby with us and leaving the other 4 kids at home with their Aunt. tickets right now are about $350 round trip per person, plus car rental, hotel and food/entertainment.
2: drive with all 5 kids and make it into a vacation- taking 4 days up and 4 days back and staying for 2 days there. It's a 26-28 hour drive straight through(which we wouldn't be doing) and we would have hotel cost, gas, food and entertainment.
I would really like to make it into a vacation for our family, but I don't really know what to expect for cost. I figure for the 2 of us to fly out there with our baby it would cost about $1000-$1200 and if I could drive with my whole family up there for about the same that would be fun. I would really like my kids to see the east coast and some of the eastern states.
What do you think? Should we just go for the weekend? If we do that, I don't think we will be able to afford a separate family vacation. Oh, and we have done the long drives before- we've done the Arkansas to Arizona a couple of times(3 day drive).
Thanks for your help!
I would say drive with all the kids if you can. I think it's important to take as many family trips together as possible. This is when you make memories for the kids - whether it's that they were included in the wedding plans or left out. Also, might let the kids spend more time with family in New York they don't get much opportunity to see.
Can I go? :-) I dream of the day we can go to New York!
All kidding aside, I would drive up there for a family vacation. This would be a great experience for your kids.
I would say go for it! Make it into a family vacation. But I think the first thing you have to do is figure out gas cost for your vehicle. You didn't say what part of NY, but there are definitely a lot of fun & even educational places that you can stop along the way... i.e. Nashville, Gettysburg, the mountains, etc. My sister, my then four yr old daughter & I drove from Columbus, OH to San Antonio last summer and the trip really wasn't that bad or hard on my daughter. There were so many great places to stop. We used the GPS & laptop to scout out inexpensive decent hotels along the route. I think the most we paid at any of them was $65! I love road trips :) Good luck and have fun!!
