Coping With The Summer Holidays

The world of parenthood seems to be divided in to two camps when it comes to school holidays - especially the six-weeker during the summer. The first group being the ones who totally and utterley dread it and the second being, those that don't. Its as stark as that really and I can actually understand thoughts from both sides of the camp wall. But does it actually have to be that bad? This is the last year that Ardvaark will be free from the realms of term time restrictions, we have always pretty much done what we want and when we want. So this year, I thought I would get in to a little bit of practice. Now, those of you who know me - might think I am ultra organised. Those of you who know me really well know that it is all a good facade and in reality I like to think I can be organised but all to often it goes to pot. So, I am going to attempt to document our Summer Holidays and hopefully give you all some inspiration along the way. For those who don't know me at all, I live near Berwick upon Tweed in rural Northumberland in the UK and have 2 adult children who live down South and 2 children here 'oop 'narth aged 3 and 4 years old. So today the ankle snappers and I spent our morning in the library - which is a very pleasant place to be actually. They always have a table with pictures and crayons for the children to colour in and a corner where there are some nice toys to play with.

When we eventually got home - me staggering under the weight of childrens books, we had a good look through them. They are allowed 20 out per card - so I made sure I lied when Arvaark asked how many she could take out. Lunch was eaten and then the children amused themselves for a while before we embarked on making jam tarts. This usually easy activity, was a complete disaster - the pastry just went horribly wrong. Mummy had a bit of a hissy fit and binned it all. We then went on to make some butterfly cakes.

Its a nice easy recipe 6oz butter 6oz caster sugar 2 eggs 6oz self raising flour half a tsp vanilla paste splash of milk Cream the butter and sugar together, add the eggs one at a time and mix well, as the vanilla paste, then the flour. Fold in well to make sure there are no lumps of flour, splosh in a glug of milk. Then divide between 12 case cases. Cook for about 12-15 minutes in a pre-heated oven at 160 degrees celsius. But by this time, it was periously close to dinner time, so we didn't get to decorate them - this will be a job for the morning.

After dinner it was a bit of tv watching before a cats lick, teeth brushed and pj's on. Tonight we had decided to let them sleep together in Ardvaarks room - something they were both very excited about. We knew there was likely to be incidents of noise, laughter, getting up to no good and no sleep. But we thought it might be fun for them. It lasted 30 minutes before I had to go up, intervene and seperate them again and within a few minutes they were both asleep in their own beds. Perhaps this is something to try again in a year or so? So today has been a good one, the children have enjoyed themselves, I still managed to do things around the house and haven't gone potty and I haven't spent any money! Bonus.