I'm hoping some people still check in here, because I could use some unbiased opinions about if I'm reading a situation correctly, and advice going forward.

So here it is: We have two boys, 7 and 9. My in-laws (husband's dad/stepmom) live in England. They have two other sons, who are my husband's half-brothers - #1 lives in a US state that's about a 90 minute flight from us, #2 lives in England. We didn't see the in-laws from 2019-2022 because of the pandemic, they visited last year (2022) and stayed with us for a few week. That was their third visit since my younger son was born (which is to say, they've met him three times in his life).

For about the last six months, they've been talking about coming to visit this summer. At first they couldn't commit to a date because #1 was going to be in England for an event and they wanted to be there when he was. This made things like booking summer camps pretty tricky, but I tried to space out their camp weeks and off-weeks to try to maximize the chance that we'd have some dedicated time with them.

Then the event got scheduled for the end of August, great! So they say that #1 is buying a house that closes at the end of June. They'll travel to him, stay until he gets the house, come to us for a visit, then go back to him for a few weeks, because it's easier to book round trip tickets. All in, they're in North America for five weeks. They tell us they'll come to us around July 2 and stay for two weeks. Cool, great, this actually works out perfectly because my kids finish school June 30 and don't have any camps booked for the week of the 3-7! I book a week off work. They insist they can't actually book their tickets to us until they arrive in the US for reasons that do not make sense to us but whatever.

Then they come back and say that actually, #1's wife's parents are having a Fourth of July party, so they'll come to us on the 6th or 7th, and that now they'll only have time to stay for 10 days instead of two weeks. We point out that that means they miss the entire week of time we all have off, and they'll be here for 10 days during which the kids are at (expensive, specialized) camps all day and it would actually be much better if they could come on the 2nd as they originally said.

Then they come back and say that last minute flights are really expensive from this city to ours, and 10 days isn't really enough for a good visit, so maybe they won't come, they'll just come for a month next summer. We push back, find some semi-reasonably priced flights, say that if they come on the 2nd and stay for two weeks that's a good length of visit, and that a lot of things could happen between now and next summer.

They come back and say look, this trip was always about #1 getting his first house, it's a major life event, and they were always only going to "fit us in if there was time" (that is, indeed, a quote), that five weeks isn't long enough to visit us both, so they're not coming.

So....I feel like I'm done. I've always felt like we were the second tier family, they've always focused way more time and resources on their two sons, and this just feels like being blatantly told "His new house is more important than seeing our grandchildren". The kids are disappointed because they thought they'd be seeing their grandparents in two weeks. I'm disappointed because I genuinely love these people and was looking forward to seeing them! And I just can't believe that somebody would casually toss off spending time with their grandchildren while they're young, and I don't want to put my kids in a place to be let down again.

Thoughts? Help? My husband is fully done, I half feel that we should tell them plainly how we feel - that being said, they're his family and he has to take the lead. But also I might be too close to this.