Counting down until the end of term

I write this post every year, but I can't believe that it's only a few short days until the summer holiday! We are lucky because we break up a couple of weeks earlier than many schools, and usually we plan a holiday for this time. However this year I'm very excited to be seeing Pulp and Blur in early July on consecutive weekends - two of my very favourite bands - so we will have a couple of quiet weeks at home in between instead. 

The first term goes so slowly and it's a real slog until Christmas, then when they go back in January it's dark and cold and seems to go on forever. But the summer term always seems so short, flying past in the blink of an eye, and although they've been having assessments over the last few weeks they are definitely winding down now.

I love the summer holidays because we are at home a lot of the time, the weather is generally pleasant, and it's so much more relaxing. I love that feeling at the start when they seem to stretch on forever, and I really appreciate being free from the school run, making packed lunches and sorting out uniform.

Later in the summer we have a Disney cruise booked which we are very much looking forward to. It's a city cruise and we will be exploring some new places, re-visiting some old favourites, and enjoying all the Disney magic on board. Apart from that we don't have many plans, as I'm always reluctant to spend too much money on going out and about when we've spent towards the holiday. But we have exchanged some Tesco vouchers for trips to Chessington and Thorpe Park and we'll probably get to the cinema as well as meeting up with friends and family.

Photo credit Phil Mono via Unsplash

Harry will enter Year 10 in September and make a proper start on his GCSEs (he took his Computer Science GCSE a couple of years early this summer so it doesn't feel such a shock for him to be starting the GCSE process as for us it has already begun!) Mia will be into Year 8 and no longer one of the tiny ones, things will be getting serious as they will be set academically in more subjects. She's involved with the school production of Bugsy Malone which will be performed at the beginning of December, so she's going to be busy with that for a few months.

But I'm not thinking about all that now!