The Reality of Family Holidays…

We’ve just come back from our Summer Holiday in Cornwall and had an amazing time. We had amazing weather, saw some fantastic sights and attractions and spent some quality time together as a family. Despite this being one of my favourite holidays in years, the reality of family holidays isn’t always quite as picture perfect as you hope it will be before you go.

Here’s my reality of holidays with a 5 year old and two year old. How many of these can you relate to??!

1) Your daughter will ask ‘are we nearly there yet’ less than 10 minutes into your 5 hour journey. No sweetheart. Just no. She will then decide she needs the loo, 5 minutes after driving past the services, when the nearest ones are now 20 miles away.

2) No matter how many bedrooms you have in your accommodation, you will inevitably at one point all end up sleeping in the same room.

3) You run out of room in the car for your pushchair and convince yourself that your nearly 2 year old is big enough to cope without. When you arrive and fully consider the reality of your first day trip, you find yourself hunting down the nearest Argos and buying the cheapest stroller you can find for £20.

4) No matter how many buckets and spades you take with you, there will always be a sudden need for your child to have a bucket of a particular colour – of course the colour that you didn’t bring.

5) You will spend around twenty minutes each morning attempting to wrestle your children to the floor Steve Irwin style in order for them to stay still enough to apply sun cream without breaking out into a fit of tickle giggles.

6) You will spend so long ensuring your children don’t burn that you obviously forget to fully cover yourself. You end up with classy red patches on your back and strap marks ruining the effect of your off the shoulder maxi and spend the remainder of your holiday trying to even it out. You fail.

7) Despite you trying to maintain a relatively balanced diet for your children, their holiday menu basically consists of chicken nuggets, chips and Nobbly Bobblys.

8) As a couple you spend the entire week tag teaming ‘it’s your turn’ to chase after the toddler who has ran off to a) stroke a dog b) steal someone’s ball or c) embrace her new found infatuation with bikes.

9) Hats. On off on off on off. No explanation needed.

10) Family photos – you will spend 90% of your time saying ‘look at me’ ‘smile’ and ‘say cheese’ and yet still come home with not one shot of all four of you all looking at the camera at the same time.

Despite the above, I absolutely love getting away with the girls and wouldn’t change it for the world but seriously… pass the wine!!

What is the reality of your family holidays?