We’re finally into the home straight – the boys break up from school at the end of the week and home school will be over at last! Well that’s assuming that everything stays on track and they do both get to go back to school in September.

Last week we actually went out on Friday. There’s an ice cream parlour near us (It’s called Billy Bob’s, and there’s another one in Skipton) that has a big outdoor play area. It only opened last year and we’ve been meaning to go ever since so when I saw they had reopened I thought we would give it a try.

They have introduced a system where you pre-book an hour slot to play so they can limit numbers (although it was still pretty busy), there are hand washing stations at the entrances to the play area, and all the seating is outdoor and well spaced.

We met up with one of Toby’s friends from school there too which meant that I had someone to talk to as well! Toby loved it immediately and was off running around as soon as we went in. Gabe was a little more cautious – I’m not surprised to be honest, he’s barely left the house since March so it was bound to be a bit overwhelming for him.

It didn’t take him too long to get into the swing of things though and he was having a great time pretending to drive this giant wooden truck!

On Saturday it was Toby’s 7th birthday. After opening presents at home in the morning (it’s Gabe’s birthday next month and we got them a Nintendo Switch between them), we went to my parent’s house via the McDonald’s Drive Thru. My brother was there too, I don’t think we’ve seen him since Christmas so it was lovely to catch up.

We have been thinking of going camping this summer but we’ve never taken the boys before and we weren’t sure what state our tent was in after spending the last 8 years in the garage. We haven’t got a big enough flat bit of garden to fit the tent in to we took it to my mum and dad’s too check it out.

It seems to have held up fine so we bit the bullet and have booked two nights at a campsite in Cheshire for next week! I’m hoping the boys will love it, and then hopefully we’ll be able to get away for another few nights later on in the summer.

So, we’ve just got another few days of home school to get through – Toby actually got to go to school for an hour and a half today to say goodbye to his Year 2 teacher and meet the Year 3 teacher. I think he’s decided that school is done now for him but we’ll persevere for another few days until Gabe finishes school on Thursday.

Have you finished school for the summer yet or are you still going?

This is my ninth year taking part in this linky celebrating childhood, based on a poem by Kahlil Gibran, “You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth” .

If you’d like to see the rest of my Living Arrows posts you can find them all here.