Half Term

I usually try and have a little plan for school holidays that involves getting us all out of the house on most days ; Tuesdays mean Story & Play time at the Central Library in York, Fridays mean the weekly shop in Tesco (hardly Disneyland Paris, but hey! it gets us out of the house for two hours), and the rest is divvied up between going to the park, Wacky Warehouse if its wet, and either visiting or being visited by friends.

We've not done too badly at all this week, although yesterday was a bit of a washout - I decided to sort out all the filing in Doug's office as we haven't done any since we moved up here, and Doug hasn't opened a single envelope; there was a mountain of unopened envelopes in the corner of his office. I made a start on it at half ten and I wasn't finished until half five. The boys were pretty good most of the day, but by about half four I could tell they were climbing the walls; not even Spiderman on the tv was enough to keep them entertained and just when I thought we might go for a stroll to the local shops and get a bit of fresh air, the heavens opened rather spectacularly.

This has got me thinking about the summer holidays. The normal school holidays last six weeks, but in Jacob's case, its more like to be eight or nine weeks; the nursery staff spend the first two or three weeks of term making home visits to meet the new intake of pupils, so they don't open at the same time as the rest of the school. Its a bit of a pain, frankly.

Anyway, I'm looking at eight straight weeks of entertaining both kids all day. You can't help thinking that the routine of library, park, play area, shopping is going to pall a bit before too long; it'll have probably palled for me by about the second week. Certainly once Jacob is at school proper we'll be able to take two weeks of the holiday up by having our annual summer vacation; it might be more expensive at that time but it actually uses up a third of the holiday, so it must be a GOOD THING. However, this year, we haven't been that sensible and we're holidaying in early July.

With any luck, the school will come into its own; earlier in the year I indicated that I'd be interested in any summer holiday activities that they might be running, and once I know what they are I'll probably have to stop myself from signing Jacob up for as much as possible :)

Hopefully we'll have a better summer than last year, weather-wise; my driving is more confident, which means we're not reliant on public transport. Although being able to drive doesn't get away from the logistical problem of being the sole parent in charge of two pre-schoolers outside of the safety of home; just taking them to the local park presents all sorts of challenges when you're on you're own, especially as they're both fairly independent and want to play in completely opposite areas of the park. I doubt I'd want to sole charge of them at, say, the seaside or near any open water.

So, the planning campaign starts here; visits to family, visits from family, events in York, events not too far from York, things at school, things at playgroup. We welcome all-comers.

Who knows; we might have a blisteringly hot summer that involves us existing mostly in the garden, moving inside only long enough to get some cold drinks or more food for the bbq. I can dream.....