Summer Holiday Plans

The start of the year and the children locally are back at school, Easter eggs already appear to be in the shops – honestly, go check out your local supermarket, and already the question being asked in the playground is – where are you off to on your summer holidays?

We do tend to start saving after Christmas, a great way we’ve found is with online banking to have a couple of saving accounts opened up with a variety of titles. One might be days out, one might be holidays or if we’re trying to save for a new object for the house we have that labelled, a very exciting Boiler is one of our listings at the moment. Come the end of the month after bills paid and food eaten if we, hahahaha, have money left over (does anyone?) then this is transferred into one of the savings accounts. We are lucky enough that one a year my husband’s work grants them a little bonus, and this is what covers our holidays normally but of course with some downward turns in the market these are always guaranteed. But when we eventually have a nice balance and it hasn’t been transferred for emergency’s purposes then we can start looking at holidays. Having though two boys in their early teens we can fast rule out a lazy beach holiday. The boys want ACTION! They want to be amused from sun up to sun down in some variety of another – I am cruel mum and we don’t tend to have technology on holiday so yup they do indeed have to find other ways to amuse themselves. So out comes the sports gear and the walking boots and we head off to try new activities or sports.

One of our friends is whisking her family off to a great tennis themed holiday with Mark Warner this summer. She and her husband have played for decades, but their kids are only just learning so this holiday is perfect as they cover all abilities and from the age of 3 years up!

Other friends of ours have bought in the January sales their very first tent and cannot wait to for another heat wave like last year to go hit the coastline of England and explore the many coves and beaches in the west country. This sounds like a dream and we might follow suit, but I think we’ll be watching the weather forecasts before making this decision. Another friend has decided that their summer vacation this year will be day vacations. They wrote a list as a family of all the places in a 4-hour range that they’d like to see and visit and they’re spending 3 weeks ticking them all off! How fabulous does that sound?

It does of course help to warm up bones up a little to be discussing this while a 2-degree icy wind blasts us from all directions and we huddle together for the kids to tumble out. No doubt come the heat wave we’ll all be discussing Christmas and decoration in the vain attempt to feel cooler while we bake in the sun!