Our touring holiday and why the kids slept outside
Our touring holiday and why the kids slept outside
My daughters are real copycats.
We got a new car, they asked for one of those push-along red and yellow ones for Christmas. We got the kitchen refurbished, they asked for pretend kitchens for their birthdays. And when we went on our first touring holiday last year, it wasn’t enough for them to stay in the caravan with us.
Oh no.
Katy and Josie love pretending to be all grown up like their mum and dad, bless them, so when we announced we’d be going on a caravan holiday, it only took five minutes before Katy asked whether we’d be having one caravan for the grown-ups and one for the kids.
Which brings me to the title of this blog…
We’re not cruel parents; we didn’t really make them sleep outside. But we couldn’t afford two caravans and we wanted to indulge the kids’ imaginations a little bit so we decided to get creative.
We’ve been on loads of holidays at campsites in North Wales over the years – mainly on Haven parks – but we’ve never had an awning. We’ve always thought about getting one and been slightly jealous of people who had one but with two kids and a new house to furnish, it wasn’t our top priority.
But now the twins are approaching ten, things have settled a little bit and with both our promotions, money isn’t quite as tight as it used to be.
So this year we decided to treat ourselves to an awning – but we kept it a secret as it was going to be part of a surprise for Katy and Josie.
Transforming the awning
This wasn’t going to be just any old awning. Oh no. My plan was to well and truly turn this awning into a little den for the kids – recreating the caravan so that they could have their own space too.
Luckily my dad was joining us on the family holiday so we had an extra pair of hands to help with the transformation – and an extra car. Here’s what we did.
We drove up to Hafan Y Môr Holiday Park in two cars – me and Phil in one with the kids and dad in his car with the awning and the rest of the kids’ surprise stuff.
Katy and Josie had ants in their pants the whole way there as they love going on holiday, so when we got there I promised them we could head straight to the Splash Zone while Grandad ‘had a lie down’.
He wasn’t having a lie down though – he was setting up the special awning. In the back of his car we’d packed the kids’ mini kitchen, a picnic table, sleeping bags – the whole shebang to make it look like a mini home for the kids so that they could have their own caravan.
We even decorated it with colourful sheets and fairy lights to make it look like a cosy little den.
When we brought the kids back from swimming at the Splash Zone we told them to close their eyes because we had a surprise for them. That had them shaking with excitement already!
And as soon as the surprise wore off when they opened their eyes, they were exploring their new den. They loved it so much they even slept in it all week
The rest of us were only invited in occasionally for snacks and juice!
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