Six Weeks of Summer – Week 1

Last Updated on 31 July 2017 by Colette

Last year we vlogged our summer holidays using the hashtag #sevenweeksofsummer and wrote a weekly round up of our adventures – we loved doing it so much that we thought we should do exactly the same thing this summer.  This year we have the rather more normal six week break from school – and, because I work from home that means I can fit my work in around lots of adventures and quality time with the kids.  This year we have so much planned – much of which Dave is off for too!

For ease, I will run our #sixweeksofsummer vlogs from Sunday to Saturday and then upload them on a Sunday evening.  You can subscribe to our channel here to make sure you don’t miss anything!

So, this is how the first week of our summer holidays looked:

Sunday 

We took a trip over to Cheshire Oaks to review FREEDOME before having a lovely lunch at Pizza Express and a wander around the shops – it was absolutely heaving and I don’t think either of us had really considered that it would be anything like that busy.  It certainly wasn’t possible to be browsing with the kids but we did manage to pick up new running trainers for Dave & Chloe.

Monday 

Amy had her last Puddle Ducks lesson of the academic year on Monday morning so after a fairly relaxed start to the day we headed off to Trafford for her swimming lesson with Ben and Chloe in tow!  Amy loves it when Ben & Chloe come to watch her as it means she can really show off all the new things she’s been learning!  I can’t believe we won’t have any more Monday morning swimming lessons with Claire – it feels like the end of an era.  Of course this is something I will write more about in our next Puddle Ducks update!  After swimming we came home and the kids spent the afternoon relaxing and watching tv whilst I tried to squeeze in a bit of work!

Tuesday

It has been ages since Ben and I had a day just the two of us, in fact I think our last #MummyandBenDay was actually last Easter.  Both girls were booked in to go to Ange for the day and I had asked Ben how he wanted to spend the day.  This time he struggled to come up with ideas so after a bit of research I booked him a climbing session at Chill Factore.  I was impressed at what good value it was – £12 for an hour’s session.  By chance, Ben was the only child booked in at 12pm so he had a full hour of one-to-one climbing with a lovely lad called James.  I must admit I was a little nervous that I might have wasted my money and that Ben would bottle it (this is what happened last time we paid for him to us a climbing wall but in fairness it was two years ago on holiday in France!)  I was wrong.  He absolutely nailed it, hitting the top of the wall twice in the first twenty minutes!

Wednesday 

I have a handful of day’s childcare booked throughout the holidays in an attempt to try and keep on top of my work – Wednesday was one of them.  Although I have quite a few deadlines to hit over the next week or so, I decided to go and visit a friend in hospital with her baby boy instead – work can wait right?

Thursday 

This was the first of the Butler Burgess Days that we have planned for the summer holidays – and we went to The Ice Cream Farm in Cheshire.  Regular readers will know we’ve been here a couple of times before and a visit was top of Amy’s wishlist for this summer holiday!  I will be writing up our trip in full later this week.  We had a bit of an accident just before we were leaving where Chloe managed to really hurt her leg – it was one of those horrible moments of “What do I do now?!” – you know when you can’t decide how bad it is and what you need to do about it?

Friday 

Friday morning started with a trip to A&E for Chloe and I – her leg was really hurting and she was refusing to weight bear.  I was confident it wasn’t broken but was worried that it was more than a pulled muscle.  The Children’s A&E at NMGH is fabulous – we were seen so quickly and everyone was really lovely.  They x-rayed her leg and decided that it wasn’t broken but that she had likely damaged the ligaments behind her knee.  She was given a brace to wear and some lovely bright yellow crutches – I’m sure you can imagine how excited she was by that!  The Doctor advised that we would be fine to still go on our camping trip as long as Chloe rested so as soon as we got back from hospital we finished putting the last few bits in the car and set off to Wales.

Saturday 

Although the weather wasn’t amazing – we pretty much got away with being outdoors all day.  Although Bala is a gorgeous little town and there’s lots of things to do nearby, we decided to just make the most of the lovely campsite and didn’t really do much at all.  The kids were more than happy to entertain themselves and it was so lovely to just relax and chat with friends around the campfire!  (I will be writing more about our trip later this week!)

So that’s it – the first week of our summer holidays.  And if you think that’s busy, it’s not going to get any easier!  I’ve booked so much stuff into our holidays that we’ve barely got time to turn around!