10 reasons I love summer holidays

Summer holidays start this week and I am so very excited. To be fair, I am not the one on school holidays, I still have loads of work to do, Christmas preparation and general “looking after three children, having a house and being an adult” responsibilities to uphold. I also have a crappy chest cold so I am not even luxuriating in the promise of multiple cocktails to celebrate the end of the school year. But I am hanging out for them to begin. We are all so tired.

Here’s 10 reasons I love summer holidays:

1) No more lunch boxes.

There’s also no school uniforms, endless forms to fill in, lunch orders, birthday parties, after school sport or rushed school runs. No more standing out the front of classrooms or watching school assemblies or negotiating the crowded supermarket trying to get ice blocks after the bell has gone.

2) Lazy mornings.

No alarms. That’s it.

3) PJ days.

I simply adore the days we all just spend lounging around in our pjs. And the true mark of an exceptional day of relaxation is evidenced by all of us going to bed in the same pjs we went to bed in the night before, without getting changed the entire the day. Often these days involve craft, iPads, long games of Monopoly and not much else.

4) Late night trips to the beach.

These spontaneous trips are the best in summer when the daylight continues well into the night. A late dinner of fish and chips on the lawn overlooking the ocean, followed by sandcastles and paddling in the water. There’s no need to be home in bed by a certain time. And to top it off, there’s always ice cream on the drive home.

5) Day time trips to the movies.

I love going to the movies. Now my kids are older I can take them in the knowledge that as long as they’re given lots of popcorn and choc tops they will sit through an entire movie without having to go the toilet four hundred times. Watching the kids marvel at the made-up worlds, their eyes sparkling with glee, is something I love to share with them, except I’m often the one most involved in the story.

6) Marathon pool days.

Swimming is one of our favourite past times. The kids could, and do, spend hours in the water. At some stage they’ll jump out and demolish a box of Chicken Crimpy’s, before wiping off the crumbs and jumping straight back into the pool. We’ve been known to drive up to an hour to visit one of our favourite pools. And in summer, we can dedicate entire days to splashing about.

7) Sprinklers and ice blocks.

Nothing says summer holidays more than nude kids running through the sprinkler, holding onto Zooper Doopers. The ice blocks melt down the kids arms, steady streams of blue, green, red and yellow drip off their elbows and onto their legs, only to be washed off in the cold sprinklers.

8) Fun with the cousins and dear friends.

Summer means our cousins come to Adelaide which is always lots of fun, for all of us. It also means catch-ups with dear friends at each other’s houses, sausages in bread and long lazy lunches that turn into dinners, while our kids play and we drink too much wine (aside from the designated driver who just eats way too much). Kids are bundled into the car far too late and they sit with their faces squashed to the windows watching the lights flash by and when we arrive home we carry them to bed.

9) Caravan adventures. 

Even though we take Audrey the caravan away during winter, autumn and spring, there’s something so special about summer trips. We set the blow up boat up next to her and fill it up with water and let the kids splash about. Sand mixes with sunscreen, hair is left unwashed, bed only comes when the sun has well and truly set. Hours are spent doing nothing, finding the joy in the quiet and despite being so close to each other, everyone settles into a rhythm of their own. And we laugh so very much.

10) Time.

And the reason I most adore summer holidays is there’s more time for us to spend together as a family. Time that isn’t peppered with responsibility. Time to cuddle and snuggle and be silly. Time to just be us and not have to squeeze into any structured expectations. Time to love.

Summer holidays rule ok.

Do you love summer holidays too? What are you most looking forward to?

Bianca x