Surviving the Holidays

We’ve just come off a four week long mid-year holiday, and originally, because we didn’t do anything fancy, I thought we hadn’t done much. Turns out that is not the case at all.

Check out some of the things we were up to…

We had a birthday right at the start of the break. After a serious count down leading up to the big day, we started the first few weeks of being four with, “Mom, how many more sleeps until I’m five?”…

We had lots of treats that are usually only reserved for weekends. We went to the Spur for milkshakes, we got ice-cream, we even had McDonalds (well, Zac did anyway). Even the ban on screen-time was somewhat lifted so that we could watch movies at home together.

We had some good extended family time including our trip to Knysna to what Zac calls “our holiday house” – if only! And took a trip to Franschhoek to the Bastille Festival.

We had a few play dates and fun days, most notably taking Zac and Sam to the games arcade one afternoon. Firstly, I didn’t even know Zac could play most of those games; and then Sam – he was a total game head, shrieking with excitement as he went on the rides. It’s given me a sneak preview to life with two growing boys, and goodness, it’s bound to be fun!

 

Then Zac had a series of firsts:

His first movie theatre experience was when we went to see Finding Dory. We’d promised that he could go during the holidays, and he asked to have his friends along, so it ended up being Zac and three friends meeting at the cinema like teenagers! The theatre was so full we couldn’t even all get seats together, so Zac and his buddies sat with one of the moms in the one row, with the rest of the chaperones scattered all around. And from where I was sitting, I could hear the running commentary the kids were providing!

Then Zac had his first visit to the dentist. Thankfully he has great teeth, and it was uneventful. He said calmly as his teeth were checked and then polished, and thought it was the coolest thing to have a suction-pipe collect all his spit!

And in keeping with some back-to-school grooming, Zac also went to the barber for the first time. Until now, no one but family has cut his hair, and I was trying to convince him to come to the hairdresser with me. Then Garth needed his hair trimmed, so he simply took Zac along. I don’t know if Zac was in shock or what, but he sat dead-still on the barber chair as he watched his long curly locks being trimmed off – and then was quite pleased with the result!

But, you know, even better than all these cool things, we had the best time at home together. Obviously there was mandatory cleaning and sorting, blogging and photobook making that needed to be done, but in between: we chased each other around the house, tackled (and tickled) each other on the beds, baked, drew and coloured – and had plenty naps!

Oh I miss the holidays already…