Visits from grandparents

Vent/ asking for advice.My family has a bit of a situation. My husband and i live 360 miles away from our home town in Southern California, where a majority of our family still lives. We moved to here, California's Central Valley, in 2008 for the family business. My husband works for his Uncle and, at the time, his Grandpa. Uncle had moved here two years earlier with Crazy Aunt and their little girl. Grandpa passed in late 2008 and left the business to Uncle who has cut my husbands salary multiple times. We got married in 2009, shortly before the first of the paycuts, but we were still making enough to keep our heads above water, though serious sacrifices had to be made. Fast forward to 2011. My husband and I had our first child, we'll call him Tank, in September if 2010. In August of 2011, we took the plunge and purchased our home. Led than 6 months later, Uncle and crazy Aunt secretly bought a house in Idaho, and didn't tell ANYONE until the week they moved. My husband found out when he showed up to work one morning and was informed that he would need to help load their house and all the business stuff and help Uncle drive everything to the new place. He ended up being gone for 2 weeks on less than 24 hours notice. Essentially, we were stuck here with no family within 300 miles.My husband and I sat down and figured out how many visits we've made to our home town. 150 since 2008. A majority of those have been since we started having kids. Tank was born in 2010. Our little girl, Squishy, was born in 2014. We have traveled there for every major holiday. Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, 4th of July, you name it. We have even had both of the kids birthdays, every year, in our home town so that family can be there. We have hosted one Christmas, in 2015, and it started a war. My husband and I, since we started dating in 2003, have been the ones that organize, cook, decorate and clean everything up at his Grandma's house for all of these events. His grandma is one of those women that is very into appearances. He house is huge and she has the best of everything money can buy. So we have to cook and decorate to her tastes. And its not unusual to have 30+ people at her Christmas Eve party that is supposed to be "Family Only." My husband's cousins, when they can be bothered to show up, often invite their in-laws, their friends or people they work with with very little notice. Grandma is fine with his as it makes her look good.My husband and I decided that we want to have Christmas at our house again. And its started a war. When we did this in 2015, we gave an open invitation to everyone in the family. My in-laws, Grandma and my husbands younger brother were the only ones that came. His cousins, aunts and uncles made a big fuss about us ruining a tradition. Whatever.Now what I need help on is this. I stated above that we have made 150 trips since 2008, never missing a single holiday down there. We want to stay here this year. What took my husband and I 5 hours to drive before kids has now turned into an 8 hour day I. The car with Tank, 7, and Squishy, 3, and our 45lb family dog, Jazz. We have to either ship all their Santa gifts down there, then wrap them after we arrive, or try to hide them in the car and sneak them inside when the kids aren't looking. I'm tired and worn out.For perspective, my in-laws have made 23 trips up here since 2008.Now, I understand that a 5 hour car trip is not anyone's idea of a good time, but this year alone, we've made 13 trips down there between January and May. My Dad passed away on February 10th, we lost my mom in August of 2013. So a majority of the trips were to deal with funeral stuff and cleaning out their storage units. But we stay at my in laws house at their insistence. They have come up to visit once.They missed both kids birthdays this year. They didn't come up at all for summer. I call them every Sunday, but they never ask to talk to the kids. My mother in law has 2 years of sick time and 3 years worth of vacation time saved up, but won't take any time off of work unless its for a trip she wants to do. That's usually for her and Grandma to go watch Elvis Impersonators. She doesn't like taking any time off because she has convinced herself that her coworkers will talk crap about her if she isn't there. Shocker, its because that's what she does.I've always been very close to my in-laws. My husband and I have been friends since we were 4. We grew up living less than one mile from each other, and his parents have always loved me and I them. I don't understand how we even got to this point. The entire family, with the exception of out of state relitives, is pissed that we don't want to come down. Either way, we have to cook and decorate, and while we make the least amount of money out of everyone else ($26k yearly) we're expected to do all of the traveling and are the bad guys because of this.Tank is old enough to realize something isn't right. He's started asking questions. Why don't Grandma and Grandpa come to visit us? Why won't grandma take off work? Do they not like us anymore? Did we do something wrong?My husband thinks I should cut off all communication with them until Christmas. No Sunday calls, no texting, no pictures on Facebook. They get really upset over if I don't regularly update. My MIL is technology challenged, will not comment or "like" anything on Facebook, but will call and have me send specific pictures to her local Costco for printing so she can show them off to all her Non friends at work. I can't do that. It seems so cruel to me to cut off contact with them. Yes, I'm mad, but my kids deserve to have their grandparents in their lives. Its the only grandparents they have left.It seems to me that they want all the perks of being grandparents without having to put in any of the effort.Am I out of line? Is this Ann unrealistic expectation on my part? I grew up with my moms parents living with us until they passed away, so I got to see them every day. My husbands grandparent live less than 20 miles away and they saw each other several times a week. My kids have only spent the night away from me once, when I had to go out of town for a funeral in June. I'm a stay at home mom because we can't afford childcare. Our nearest family member lives 300 miles away. We save all of our money for our trips down there. We don't go on vacations, I don't get my hair professionally cut and I don't get my nails done. We don't take vacations, we don't eat out, both of our cars are older (hubby drives a '97 mustang and I drive a 2008 Town and Country mini van And both cars are 100% paid off), I darn socks and patch jeans, if we need it, we make it, if we can't make it, we buy it used. We have 1 credit card with a $500 limit. We cut and scrimp in every way we can just to make sure we can go visit family. I just feel like we are being taken advantage of. Hubby can't leave his job. The minute he does, Uncle will sell off the whole thing, and Grandma relies on her meager pension from the business to survive. Hubby is trying to keep things afloat until grandma passes so she isn't thrown into poverty.Has anyone else been in a similar situation? Am I the one out of line? Is this normal for families that live this far apart?I apologize for any errors above. I'm on my phone and it keeps acting up. via /r/Parenting http://ift.tt/2AnPk8s