So we’ve made it through week 2 of the holidays – only 4 more to go! Toby and Gabe are getting used to being at home together more now, so we’ve not had quite so much squabbling, and they’ve even started getting up a bit later than their usual 7 am which is a treat too!

After spending the first week of the holidays mostly at home we actually did a few activities out of the house this last week. Saying that, on Monday we stayed at home and sorted all the toys on our big Ikea storage unit in the Living Room. I managed to convince the boys to get rid of a few things, and we tidied everything else up so they actually know what they’ve got and can’t complain that they don’t have anything to play with!

We had a long overdue family trip to the dentist on Monday too – thankfully all our teeth are fine. The dentist was happy with how well the boys are looking after their teeth so that was good to hear, and even though they have both got quite wonky teeth at the moment there’s nothing to be done until they get bigger and we see how things move when more of their adult teeth come in and their mouths grow too.

At the beginning of the week we came up with a list of some different activities that we could to do over the holidays and on Tuesday the boys asked if we could go and play crazy golf. There’s a course that opened last year not far from us in Lytham St Annes that I had heard good things about so we went and gave it a go.

We didn’t need to book which was a bonus – everything else seems to require so much planning these days! It was fairly busy but we didn’t have to wait to play, although with people on every hole we did sometimes have to wait a few minutes for the people in front of us to move on as we went round.

We actually (and surprisingly!) had a really good time. I didn’t play myself because I knew I would probably have to help Gabe, but I think the key to having fun was not keeping score! Gabe still really struggles with losing but both he and Toby were happy just to play without worrying about who was winning so we all enjoyed ourselves!

On Thursday I took the boys swimming at Ribby Hall which isn’t far from where we live. It was great for them just to be able to play in the water and do what they wanted rather than just having to swim up and down like they do in their swimming lessons. I think a few more trips to the pool just for fun will actually really help them when we get back to lessons in September.

This weekend we swapped Street Monkeys to Saturday because yesterday we started our actual summer holiday and drove down to Windsor. Today we’re spending the day at Legoland and somehow we’ve managed to keep it a secret from the boys until now – mostly in case something happened and we ended up not being able to come! They’ve never been to any kind of theme park before so I’m really hoping they have an amazing time!

Tomorrow we’re heading down to Dorset for 4 nights of camping. Hopefully the storms that hit the south west at the end of last week have gone now and we don’t get blown away – fingers crossed! I’ll be back next week to let you all know how we got on anyway. I hope you’re all enjoying your summer holidays whether you’re at home or getting away somewhere – I don’t know about anyone else, but even after all the lockdowns and having the kids at home for so long last year, six weeks off school still feels like a long time to fill!

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.