Question for transplants (house, living, vacation)

[Adios Baltimore]

How are you all doing during the holidays without your families nearby?
Thanksgiving was a little lonely for me. My parents are coming for Christmas thankfully. I'm not so sure I'm cut out for living so far away from them.

[chitty]

well I'm not to close to my family..but my Dad lives five hours away and my Mom lives only two..so if they wanted to they can drive up to were I'm at no biggy..but I do see were you're coming from I miss them from time to time.

[jdreynol]

Hang in there. My wife and I left Baltimore years ago and now live here. But my one daughter grew up and moved back to Baltimore so we have the same issue. We just use the phone and email a lot. It makes the time between visits a lot easier to take. Our other daughter also grew up and lives in Louisville. But we are all still close and still very much family. You just have to work at keeping the communication open.

[sprout1976]

My birthday was right after my husband and I moved. I cried. I know, I am 31, but I missed my family. Thanksgiving was hard too. We're really trying hard to get back to Chicago for Christmas. The higher temps are nice, but I'm just a little lonely for bitter cold and snow! LOL.

[patrick farrell]

Actually I'm not doing too bad. Moved from Michigan in July. My brother lives in Ft. Worth and he came down for Thanksgiving which was nice. I'm going home for Christmas, found a dirt cheap flight on transunion. It is harder without my parents being close, but it is doable....few days of loneliness beats a foot of snow for 3 months any day!

[Austin97]

Originally Posted by Adios Baltimore

How are you all doing during the holidays without your families nearby?
Thanksgiving was a little lonely for me. My parents are coming for Christmas thankfully. I'm not so sure I'm cut out for living so far away from them.

Ive always gone home for thanksgiving and christmas. Then when I got married my wife and I alternated between her parents and my parents. Frankly I have been looking for a way to not go to either parents and be able to take a vacation on my own during that time.

I know a lot of people that stay in town and quite a number do thanksgiving together.

[Phisch]

We did ok My oldest wanted to know why no one was coming over for Thanksgiving and I reminded him that we used to go to grandma's house so we never really had anyone over.

We did our own little dinner in the afternoon then we spent the evening meal at our neighbor's. That was nice

[gigi927]

We had a hard time on our first Thanksgiving here, so we went to Sea World . This year, now that we have tons of friends, was great. We went to a Thanksgiving dinner at friends' house and everyone there was away from their families. Hang in there!

[love roses]

To us, being away from family during the holidays gave us an opportunity to start our own family traditions, instead of the ones we had going to other family members homes and celebrating their traditions. Now that we live closer to family again, we still like being in our own place doing what WE want to, and then later, we can go hang at someone elses house (namely, my bratty little sisters) and involve ourselves in her little rituals Another bonus was we got a break from my mom and sisters infernal Thanksgiving and Christmas bickering

[jhwest]

It felt a little weird to us too. Couldn't cook anything this year since we just barely moved in and the kitchen was in dissarray. My husbands boss invited us for Thanksgiving dinner. We went since he is pretty much the only person we know in Texas (apart from our realtor). It ended up being fun. He invited a lot of "stragglers" that also didn't have family. The majority of them were from other countries as well and it ended up being pretty interesting.
I find that many holiday traditions, although nice, can often feel binding and cause us dissappointment when we are with people who don't follow them just so. The older I get and the less rigid I am about my holiday expectations, the happier I seem to be.