Happy holidays indeed

We wound up the first week of our Christmas holidays yesterday – our beachy, family week, and what a week it was! We ate. Oh my stars we ate. Each night one of the couples were in charge of dinner – gourmet lamb burgers, seafood delights, bbq’s, pasta platters or an American BBQ extravaganza! The drinking wasn’t far behind the obscener consumption of food. 11am? Time for a Prosecco certainly! Lunch time prawns? Well that calls for some ice cold chilled pinot grigio does it not?! 5pm? Hendricks & tonic water please! You get the general idea.

The kids had the best. time. ever. Honestly. Each and every time I felt exhausted, or over the small living space, or dirty floors, or doors that had no privacy whatsoever (honestly why is it so hard to have closed doors and not open louvres?) I just had to look at the kids and see the fun that they were having and it was all OK again. They swam together, ate together, laughed together, watched movies together and very rarely fought together. They were kind to each other. Encouraging to each other. It was so nice to see and something that I will always remember. The effect of having all these older kids around Daisy has had the most remarkable change in her. She has grown up SO much. The pull ups she was still wearing to bed? Gone. The pool and swimming that she was wary of? No more! The vocabulary? Through the roof. The general behaviour? Just better. Somehow. The adults didn’t do too badly either – my poor little sis that hasn’t started having kids was well and truly overwhelmed by all that noise – but we still managed to not have any dramas, no arguments (that I was aware of anyway) and speaking for myself, I can say it was some of the loveliest time I have had with all my family in a long time.

I’m not sure when or if we will ever do it again. But I sure am glad that we gave it a try.