A quiet half term, close to home.

After a few crazy months of travel, birthday parties, days out and of course that all important question that Mike asked me, we’ve been enjoying a quiet half term, close to home. I’m blogging a full update of the past few months in our crazy lives next week. Today I just wanted to share a short update on what we’ve been up to over half term.

This week we have had almost daily trips to the park and been to about 6 different parks in our local area, which of course is always a winner with the children. For many of those days, we’ve taken picnics with us because we are trying to save money and eat out less (we’ve gotten into quite bad habits with how often we eat out!). I think picnics always seem so much more exciting when you are little than when you are grown-up (and have to prepare it all!). On one of our trips to the park, a man was painting white lines for a race track with markers at 100m, 200m, 300m and 400m. The paint hadn’t even had a chance to dry before we were testing it out. What started as twin-racing (yes I do think that should be a sport!), ended as whole family racing. I have to shamefully admit… Bunny, at 10 years old, is faster than me.
 

To be honest, it’s no real surprise as Bunny runs Junior Park Run most weekends. She’s completed 15 runs now and her pace is improving a great deal. Tiny and Fluffy also do park run (I run with them) but we do have to slow to a walk for sections of the 2km course as their little legs get tired.

Despite living in Gloucestershire all of his life, Mike had never been to Sandford Parks Lido in Cheltenham, which has always been one of my favourite places. So we had to change that. We’ve used two of the sunniest days this week to lounge by the pool, eat chips and swim. All four of my sproglets love swimming and Baby Bear particularly loves how warm the water is at the lido. Mike is now a big lido fan too and I expect we will be spending much of our summer there.

Other than that, between shifts at work, trips to town, a hospital appointment and visiting family, we’ve also spent time in the garden and chilled out at home. And whilst we’ve not gone anywhere far or spent much money, this half term has been truly lovely. In all honesty, we don’t have many relaxed school holidays where we stay at home. We are nearly always travelling somewhere.