And so it begins…

The school holidays are here at last. The badly held together shoes, still shoved on every morning as there was only three weeks left to go, can now be recycled along with the ripped school bags and jumpers. The June melt-down madness will hopefully cease as the packed-lunch boxes are stored away for another Summer holiday. We are safe in the knowledge  that we can now sleep-in every morning.

Well, you see that is the plan, but in reality the kids are still tuned to ‘school’ time for at least another week as they climatise to the long stretch of games, clubs and annoying Mum that lies ahead. We are chilling at 7am rather than completing the breakfast marathon in three nano seconds like we normally do but all we really want them to consider of a morning is not to come out of their rooms until there is an 8 on the clock – and I don’t mean the minute hand.

I sit here, watching Wimbledon, Andy Murray is playing well and I look across at my chilled glass of wine and wonder if life can get any better. The kids are upstairs pretending not to fall asleep to Scooby-Doo and doing great impressions of nodding dogs while they are at it. A resounding WE’RE NOT TIRED rings out every now again after I prod them awake. The last day of term has left them drained – saying goodbye to their buddies in P7 who leap over the holidays to start High School. The dreaded place where teachers no longer have a title before their surname ‘Yeah, I’ve got Miller for Geography and Rickland for Maths’ you can almost hear them grunt as their knuckles grow closer to the ground. And that’s just the girls – I’m joking!

We have plans made for the large expanse of duvet days ahead, the boys will actually want more of a break than they are going to get this year as we depart across the big pond for three weeks. Mr B and I will restrain ourselves from getting too excited as, let’s face it, all things mouse-like over there is aimed at the kids. Hands up though – I am so excited I can’t sleep, swimming with Dolphins and Harry Potter World are what are keeping me awake rather than thoughts of food shops and household chores (not that they ever disturbed my slumber but you know what I mean).

So here’s to the next 6 weeks of holidays, may you all come through it with dignity and pride. May your children appreciate all the effort of gluing/paper cutting/paper mache/trips out that you so humbly provide them.

You may notice the shares in Wolfblass and Oyster Bay shoot through the roof – I’m not pointing fingers or anything…