There is never enough time, or money

What do you do when you have to choose between seeing family who you hardly ever see but once or twice a year or choosing doing something for yourself?

Let me explain.

Its rare that all of us. Chris, I and the kids go home to MN together. I go home more during deployments to visit. However there is a good chance that neither Chris nor I will get back to MN for over a year from the last time we came in the summer of 2008. Obviously when Chris is gone he cant go and I don't know if we will make it home this summer without him because its allot of work with the kids and the dog for such a short time, not to mention the money aspect of it. So more then likely it wont happen. However Chris gets 30 days of stand down in which he can take leave when they return from mission where we could come home for two weeks. Now as much as we love seeing everyone and it will have been so long since that has happened I also look at this as an opportunity to book a vacation for us, and by us I mean just Chris and I. I have had offers of people willing to come and watch the kids for us, and its something we have never really done. We both want to go to Vegas and for the price of airfare and hotel for 4 days its around 800 dollars. Now granted when you add in gambling money, food and show tickets costs it will be a bit more then that but the point is we have the chance for a vacation. We always take our money and go home when he gets times off, and after at 7 years of marriage and no vacations and lots of time apart we want and need this trip. But with the trip means no going home to MN and no seeing family. The only option is to drive to MN, see family, fly to Vegas, have our vacation, fly back and then drive back to MN. However this adds a huge amount of money to the price tag of the trip because it costs us between around 1500 depending on gas prices to make the trip to and from MN with hotel costs, food and gas. We could do it, but again that's money that we really don't have.

I'm so confused.

There is some silver lining to this situation. When we move in the beginning of 2011 we will be able to stop and visit family, but before that point I'm not sure when we will get there if we take this vacation. We are not rolling in the money and between the Vegas trip and our Disney trip in 2011 we are planning to take in December on the Land and Sea cruise we will have spent a good chunk of money, so trying to squeeze in very limited time off and the cost is hard for us, but like I said we always go home and for this is a chance for us to have for us. I mean we never took a real honeymoon unlike Chris's sister(s) because his parents paid for the whole entire wedding they had the money they did not have to pay for that and put towards a honeymoon where as we did have to pay for a portion of our wedding plus travel from GA where by the time it came to the honeymoon we had nothing left. Same goes for the other sister who had her debt paid off, is having her wedding paid for by them too and will probably be able to also afford a honeymoon as I have already heard them discussing where to go(Guess that's what we get for his parents not liking me and seeming to not want us to get married)

So as I said we deserve this, we need this. So why can I not just feel OK with the decision? Why do I feel bad we are missing the opportunity to see our family and friends? I mean the kids are growing up so fast and they change so much that I don't want to take their chances to see family and our family's chances to see them.

This is the sucky part of being a military family, decisions like these.

Sorry to bother you with my ramblings and bitching, its hard when your sounding board is out to sea.

Another reason we need a vacation minus the kids, their constant fighting, I'm off to break up yet another shouting match.