Holiday mode in full swing!!

First week of August we went camping with a bunch of friends. It was wet and damp and windy mostly, but the sun came out occasionally. The kids loved it in spite of the weather (they always do because camping is fun!) and we packed in a lot. This year I brought S’s friend along as at 12 she is quite a bit older than the other kids and needed someone her own age to entertain her. Adding in more children means more stuff and less space in the car so we got a towbar fitted and borrowed a friend’s trailer. It was my first time driving with a trailer so I was a bit nervous but actually now I feel like a superhero after loading up the trailer and roofbox all by myself and driving it there and back! Feeling like an extremely capable goddess at the moment…

We were forced to spend a wet, grim day out at the Tank Museum, because a) it was dry and indoors and b) nothing says a family camping holiday like a realistic war simulation (yes there were actual trenches too). We also spent a wet rainy morning seeing the Barbie movie at the cinema (which was fab), and another damp and windy day out at the arcade on the seafront!

We also got a couple of decent sunny-ish days at the beach for sandcastles and frolicking and digging giant holes etc. Only a few minor strops and grumps from the children. The best one was when the exhausted and over-excited 5-year old handed me her enormous ice-cream cone and screamed into my face “Mummy it’s YOUR FAULT it’s MELTING!! STOP MAKING MY ICE-CREAM MELT SO FAST!!! IT’S ALL ON MY HAND!!!” and then she ran away screaming hysterically and had to be coaxed back to finish eating said ice-cream.

Another hilarious moment from my friend’s son: “Mummy you have to buy this cereal it’s so yummy” “Well I did buy it once and you refused to eat it, you wouldn’t even try it” “THAT’S BECAUSE I DIDN’T KNOW IT WAS DELICIOUS!! YOU NEVER TOLD ME!!”

We made it home in once piece and after unloading we started all the washing of the clothes and the children… I’ll be catching up on laundry for at least 2 weeks but it was worth it!

Then I went back to work, and the kids went back to holiday camp for a week, but we had some friends come to visit and various bits and bobs happened here and there.

My lovely friend CeeCee was over from Australia doing some travelling and holidaying and came to stay for a few days, and then my BFF’s came to stay for a few days and we had some lovely birthday celebrations for them. A Dim Sum feast here, a birthday cake there, it was all very lovely. I also squeezed in a HEAT training for work so spent a day at a posh country hotel in Surrey getting shot at by actors pretending to be insurgents and dealing with catastrophic bleeding after simulated car accidents etc.

I had numerous calls from S’s holiday camp again as this time there was some inappropriate over-sharing of personal information that needed to be dealt with, but the camp staff were wonderful about it all and S and I had a really good chat afterwards and we came up with a codeword that she can say to me when she is feeling wobbly and needing lots of love and attention and cuddles. It’s hard sometimes for a 12-year old to admit they need their mummy and sometimes want to be rocked and cuddled like a baby for a bit, and so we now have a codeword to help us so she doesn’t have to ASK for something so embarrassing even though she craves it and needs it.

We’ll see how it goes…

However overall both kids have enjoyed the holiday clubs and we will definitely go back next year for more! It gets the kids out of my hair and they have fun running around playing games and doing sports all day tiring themselves out nicely and allowing me to get some actual work done! It also helps to keep some level of structure to the holidays which the girls like (getting up every morning with a purpose etc) and it means we are not in each other’s faces all day long winding each other up! Although I will have to start saving up for it now as it’s close to £200/£250 per child per week so around £450 a week for both of them!

Later in August we went to visit various family members for a week or so – both to see family and hang out and also get some free childcare for a week as I needed to work and can’t afford any more holiday clubs this year.

My lovely mum took the girls out and about and did lovely things like bowling and trampoline parks and Go Ape etc, so I could get some work done in peace. The weather cheered up a bit so we got the odd bit of sunshine and some nice downtime together. Though I think by the end of the week both the kids and Grandma were a bit exhausted and broken!

Then we headed home to wash clothes and re-pack and headed off to France for a final treat of the summer to stay with my cousin!

We were due to fly on the 29th August, the day after a system error that grounded flights for several hours across all UK airports, so hundreds of flights were cancelled….

On the Tuesday morning we got up and checked our flight – it was showing as on-time, so we packed up, and got a taxi to the bus stop, and got on the 10am coach to Heathrow. As soon as the coach left Oxford, our flight status changed to delayed (from 2pm to 5.15pm) but I figured, nevermind we’ll just have to hang out for a few extra hours at the airport.

The airport was rammed and busy and there were long queues everywhere so it took us a good 2 hours to get our bags dropped off and get through security, which thankfully didn’t matter at all. The kids were really good with all the queueing and so on and we had a long, slow, late lunch of very expensive burgers and chips (Heathrow prices!!!!).

Then we discovered a little soft play area hidden in the terminal that I never knew existed so the girls disappeared into the cage to play and then I checked my phone to see if the flight time had been updated…. and saw our flight had been cancelled….

I raced outside to look at the board and sure enough – there it was, cancelled.

We were so gutted!! I queued up for a while inside the departures area to ask how we go about re-booking the flight etc, but a rather harried looking staff member informed us firmly they would not re-book anyone from the airport and we all had to go home and rebook it online via the website (which had just at that moment crashed anyway).

So I collected the girls and we trudged back out through customs (long queue again) and waited for our bags to arrive, but after a good hour another harried looking staff member informed us there were about 6,000 bags out the back from cancelled flights and she didn’t even have our flight on her list so we should just go home and abandon our bags…

We went outside, bought some milk and toothbrushes and trudged back to the bus stop, after literally an entire day at Heathrow.

The buses were all super late so we waited a good 45 mins, and I idly tried the website again to see if it was back up to rebook another flight and suddenly our flight was showing as delayed again, not cancelled! It was bizarre! It was 5.50pm and the flight was saying delayed departure at 6pm, so I knew we had no chance of making it, but also realised if it wasn’t cancelled and we missed it we probably wouldn’t get a refund/rebooked flight, so we popped back in to find out what the hell was going on!

A nice lady called the gate and it turned out it was indeed planning to depart and they were waiting for a few stray passengers. She explained I had kids with me and they agreed to wait if we went back through! So we dashed back through the airport like lunatics, (thankfully it was mostly empty at this point in the check-in and security halls) abandoning our bottle of milk and water bottles at security as there was no time to empty them or anything,and ran all the way to the gate. Onto a bus we tumbled and onto the plane! I was frantically texting my cousin to say it was back on and could they still come and get us at the airport after all, and we were a bundle of emotions by that point!

At 7pm the pilot came out to have a word and after apologising for all the delays he said “We’ve finally got a slot for take off in about 15 mins, and as soon as we are in the air my co-pilot here is gonna fly it like he stole it!”

We arrived at about 10pm and finally got to my cousin’s house around midnight! What a day! Talk about Schrodinger’s flight – both cancelled and uncancelled depending on whether or not you are inside the airport!

The rest of the week was wonderful, we swam in the pool and in the local lake, we had glorious sunshine and went to a lovely little theme park, ate great food and caught up with family. The kids were beautifully well-behaved for most of the trip and coped so well with all the drama! Annoyingly our flight home was at 7am (the only one I could find) so we had to get up at 3.30am to get home, and I have caught a rotten cold while we were there, but it was totally worth it.

And that’s our summer! Busy but packed full of fun and I am confident we have made some pretty awesome memories this year – and even more importantly we got to the end of the summer and we all still like each other so it’s a massive win in my book!