In spite of everything we managed to have a lovely summer and a good break.

We went camping in Dorset near Studland Bay/Swanage with some friends and had a marvellous time. The kid ADORED camping and we got lucky with some decent weather so we spent most days lounging on the beach and splashing around looking for shells etc.

It was a fab little campsite (called Burnbake) 5 mins from the beach and I would definitely go again!

The only annoying thing was that there was no phone signal or reception or WiFi at all at the campsite, and at that point we STILL hadn’t exchanged contracts on the house so every time we went to the beach I was inundated with emails asking about surveys and various things, which was a tad stressful!

But we did have a lovely time!

Then we went home for literally one night before we drove to Kent for another week’s holiday at the seaside with my sister, my mum and her partner’s family.

It was also lovely to see all of them, as I haven’t been in a big group with other people for about 18 months! So it was really odd, but it was lovely to catch up with everyone, and nice for my daughter to have long enough to warm up to everyone and start bonding properly with her aunt, uncle, cousins and so on.

Sadly I was feeling pretty grotty when we arrived, not sure if it was the camping or house stress but I had a terrible sore throat and cold when we first arrived and was fairly knackered for most of the week. The stressful emails ramped up a notch and even though we still hadn’t exchanged we were supposed to be completing and moving house the week after, so I spent a lot of time on the phone trying to organise various bills and internet to get set up / cancelled etc and talking to the solicitors and estate agents.

At one point I felt really overwhelmed by it all and just melted down and cried for a bit. Well-meaning family members kept telling me to just chill out about it, but after carrying so much stress for so many weeks on end there wasn’t much I could do to manage my stress levels.

I’m fairly certain I had some sort of stress-related dyspraxia as I just kept falling over and walking into things and generally injuring myself as well as feeling rotten and ill. I’m literally covered in bruises and grazes!

However it was another lovely week’s holiday, house drama aside, and we FINALLY exchanged contracts on the house a mere week before the move!

Our journey home was LONG as we got stuck in a mega jam that lasted for hours on end, but we finally made it home, and could then get started on packing up the house ready for the move.

The kid was fairly unsettled the last few days before the move, understandably, and I didn’t really have enough time to talk to her about what was happening, as I was so flat out busy, so we had a few rough nights and that didn’t help either. I kept waking up at 3am thinking of more things to add to my to-do list, and I had one panicked dream that we got to the new house and it turned out it was even smaller than my old house and I had made a huge mistake and should never have moved. I woke up from that dream in the middle of the night convinced that it was all a huge mistake and had to talk myself down and remember it was all going to be fine in the end….