What can I do for my dear MIL?

[The Natural]

Situation in short is this:

I'm married to a woman from Crimea. Her mother is living there but have been to Norway twice on long visits, last went back in June 2014. We have a boy age 2, MIL love him to death, of course, and helped us a lot during her visit. MIL have almost daily Skype contact With my wife. We planned to go to Crimea this september, but as my wife just got a job, 50% but more to come, she's not really eligable for time out this year. I want to go away as she might get 2 weeks off, but wife say we better wait until Next year. So as the easygoing kind of guy that I really am, I'm thinking maybe we'll do that, however much I want to go somewhere else for a few weeks. Upside to this is we'll save some 4 grand that we can put into some needed home improvements.

But the down side of it is my MIL. She will of course be disappointed to not see her Family (and maybe most of all Our 2-year old). I really like my MIL, even though we can't communicate in a common Language, and want her to have the best life possible.

So my question is, what can we do to ease the pain, so to speak? I'm thinking Money here, maybe buy her something special? There is no point in sending her extra Money for her to spend on herself my wife informs me. She's very frugal and will just save it and still go around looking for the best prices of everything. Dunno, is this common for the baboskas?

She's got another daughter living in Moscow and they sometimes goes home for visits to Crimea. Maybe send some money to her to buy something that she would like. But what? Was thinking around 10.000 rubles.

Any ideas?

[Gylden]

My suggestion would be to try to get her back to Norway for another visit??
Grandson face to face seems like it would do the trick.

[The Natural]

My suggestion would be to try to get her back to Norway for another visit??
Grandson face to face seems like it would do the trick.

Yes, but we'd try that one but she declined. You see, she's now living in the Apartment of my wife's sister. But my wife has also an Apartment, one that is rented out to a young couple. MIL said to my wife she can't come to us now because she has to tend to those Apartments, take care of business. Don't ask me why as I'd figure this should go on by itself for a couple of months, but that's the situation it seems.

[LiveFromUkraine]

Natural, if she is missing your family, maybe getting some new professional photos or setting up a video would be a better gift.  Something that shows you are all thinking of her. 

[The Natural]

Natural, if she is missing your family, maybe getting some new professional photos or setting up a video would be a better gift.  Something that shows you are all thinking of her.

Yes, a good idea. Some photos of the hopeful in a calendar and some video of us might be good. Thanks for the input LFU.

[Gylden]

Yes, but we'd try that one but she declined. You see, she's now living in the Apartment of my wife's sister. But my wife has also an Apartment, one that is rented out to a young couple. MIL said to my wife she can't come to us now because she has to tend to those Apartments, take care of business. Don't ask me why as I'd figure this should go on by itself for a couple of months, but that's the situation it seems.

Yeah that's a real head scratcher. If it's a relatively new situation, it will probably change after she gets used to it (being a land lord).
 

Also I will add, that when my wife and I were in Crimea some years ago, we rented an apartment from a Russian couple who owned several apartments on the waterfront. They seemed real nice, but I noticed they were always checking up on us and showing up at the apartment. They seemed a little nervous Like they didn't trust us or something. Could be that there have been historically problems with renting. We were in Yalta, but it could be just the rental environment there too.
 

[2tallbill]

Yes, but we'd try that one but she declined.

Buy her tickets that correlates with baby's birthday, wife's birthday,
St John's day, St Olaf's day, Panamanian ripe banana day, National
blueberry awareness day or some very important such day (to Norwegians)
and tell her the tickets were non refundable to save money. 

Udachi!


Bill