August was a month of two halves for us – two weeks at home and then almost two weeks on holiday in France. I did my best to keep the boys occupied in the first half of the month with various activities but if I’m honest we were all just counting down until it was time to go away.

We had a fab holiday – we were staying on a campsite not far from Paris and Disneyland (we didn’t go to Disney though). After a very long journey in the car it rained on the first day we were there, but then the weather was lovely for the rest of the time. It was a bit too hot for the last part to be honest – we’re not a family that does very well when it’s very hot!

If I’m being entirely honest (which I almost always am) the boys behaviour wasn’t much better on holiday than it had been at home, and they still squabbled quite a lot but we did manage lots of fun times too.

We went to a big cat park and saw lions and tigers and all sorts of other felines, we had a day out in Paris, and a few other days out in the local area too. We went to the pool almost every day (well Toby and I did anyway), and my parents joined us for the last few days so it was nice to spend a bit of time with them too.

Our journey back was pretty epic – it took 11 hours to get home, with most of that being spent in the car, apart from an hour on the boat. The boys did really well with all the time we were driving, especially as Toby gets travel sick so it’s quite hard to find things to entertain him.

Anyway, I am planning on writing more about our holiday and sharing some of the many photos we took, but for now I’m just going to post these two family pictures.

The first one was taken on our last proper day of the holiday. We went to the medieval town of Provins not far from where we were staying. We had a look round the town, had crepes for lunch and then went to see a falconry show which was fantastic. Just before we got in the car to go back to the campsite my dad took this picture.

Toby and Gabe were both shattered by this point, and very hot, so it’s not the best family picture we’ve ever taken but it’s a good reminder of our holiday anyway…

I”m going to show you another picture I took too, just because I like it and I think it will be one of the lovely memories of our holiday too. The boys were both pretty good at sleeping until a sensible time while we were away, but even so most mornings Barry got up and gave them breakfast while I dozed a while longer in bed. More often than not though one or other of them would come and get in bed with me for a cuddle before I got up, and on a few mornings we all ended up back in the (not very big) bed!

One morning I took this quick selfie of us all lying together and I just love it, even with Toby’s silly face!

So that’s August, and another summer done. The boys are both at school now (although Gabe is only doing half days for until the middle of next week), and I think September is going to be a fairly quiet month while we all settle back into our term time routine.

I’ll be back at the end of the month with another family portrait…

This is the sixth year of taking Me & Mine family portraits every month. You can see all the rest of the posts here.