Ah, the summer holidays.

Six weeks of sunshine, family time, day trips, ice creams, questionable amounts of snacks and my boy repeatedly asking, “What are we doing today?” before I’ve even had my breakfast!

There’s something about the summer holidays that can make you feel like you’re doing it wrong if you’re not going away.

Open social media and it can sometimes feel as though everyone you know is currently sitting beside a swimming pool in Spain, or exploring some foriegn land.

Meanwhile, I’m standing in my kitchen trying to work out where we can go on a tight budget wondering whether I can count a trip to ASDA as a day out.

Well, I’m going to say it:

You do not have to go away for the summer holidays.

And, actually, you can have a really lovely summer without packing a suitcase, sitting in airport security or spending half your life in a car journey.

Not everyone can afford a holiday

Let’s start with the obvious one.

Holidays are expensive.

Really expensive.

There is accommodation, food, travel, activities, luggage, insurance and a few other things that mysteriously appear on the bill once you’ve committed to going away.

And while we’re constantly told to “make memories”, the reality is that not every family has the money to book a holiday.

There are many families who simply cannot afford to go away.

And that’s okay.

It’s not something I’m ashamed of, and I don’t think anyone else should feel ashamed either. But we are one of the minority of families that earn a standard amount that can afford us to have a bedroom each, a nice garden and a pet cat!

Sometimes finances dictate what we can and can’t do. Sometimes there are other priorities. Sometimes you’ve simply looked at the price of a family holiday and thought, “Absolutely not. I could spend that redecorating the house!”

Whatever the reason, staying home isn’t a failure. We manage to just about survive covid so what’s 6 weeks in comparison??

It doesn’t mean your children are missing out on childhood.

It doesn’t mean you haven’t made an effort.

And it certainly doesn’t mean you can’t have fun.

Normal life can continue

One of the things we’ve found helpful is keeping some routine.

Now, I’m not suggesting we get up at 6am during the holidays, put on a school uniform and recreate the school run for entertainment.

Absolutely not.

I enjoy my sanity too much.

But having some sort of rhythm to the day helped me to make a huge difference.

Getting up at a vaguely sensible time, getting dressed rather than remaining in pyjamas until 3pm, having regular mealtimes and knowing roughly what the day might involve can help everyone.

It can simply mean having a bit of predictability amongst the chaos.

You don’t have to entertain them constantly

This one took me a while to accept.

I do not need to become a full-time holiday activity coordinator.

He does not need a Pinterest-worthy activity planned for every hour of every day.

It is perfectly acceptable for him to be bored.

In fact, boredom (apparently) can be good for children. Personally I’ve forgotten what it’s like to get bored!

Let him make a den.

Encourage him to play in the garden, water fights are fun if you don’t mind getting wet!!

Get the Lego out and start him off on a new project!

Let him occasionally announce that he is “sooooo bored” despite having hundreds of toys within a three-metre radius.

I don’t have to fix it.

Sometimes the best memories come from the simplest things.

Discover what’s on your doorstep

Go for a walk somewhere you’ve never explored.

Visit a park you’ve never tried.

Find a nature/woodland trail.

Take a picnic somewhere.

Visit a museum, there are free ones too.

Look for free events happening locally.

Explore a nearby town.

Go to the library.

Have a beach day if you’re close enough.

Take the bikes or scooters out.

Have a photography challenge.

Go geocaching.

Visit a farm, garden centre or local attraction.

Or simply get in the car with a flask, some snacks and absolutely no idea where you’re going.

Sometimes discovering somewhere new doesn’t require a passport.

It just requires Googling “things to do near me” and hoping you don’t accidentally end up somewhere that costs £27 per person just to look at a green pond.

Make the ordinary feel special

One of the best things about not going away is realising that you don’t need to do something huge to create a memory.

Have a movie night with popcorn.

Eat dinner outside.

Make homemade pizzas.

Go for an evening walk, this was a favourite as it was too hot to go out during the day when we had the heatwave!

Hit the charity shops and find a board game or jigsaw puzzle that could take most of the day, we one took 3 weeks to do a 5,000 piece one!

Build a fort.

These things might seem small, but children don’t necessarily remember the price tag.

They remember the fun.

They remember laughing.

They remember Mum or Dad joining in.

They remember staying up late and watching stars because apparently it’s the summer and normal rules no longer apply.

And what about staying sane?

This might be the most important bit.

If you’ve just spent six weeks at home with the children, did you look after yourself too?

Setting boudaries and keeping to our almost normal routine kept us sane, making sure we had time to ourselves and relying on play dates helped with that. Unfortunately we don’t have grandparents to babysit, but we have booked a day off the 2 of us when he goes back to school as reward, so we can sit back and chill and think “Ah, see we got through that without killing each other!”

Don’t compare your summer to someone else’s highlight reel.

Some days were brilliant.

Some days were boring.

Some days we all had fun and laughter and it will be a treasured memory for us all.

There was only 1 or 2 days where I did wonder if selling a child on eBay is technically legal.

That’s family life.

A different kind of summer

We didn’t have to go away to have a holiday.

We didn’t spend thousands of pounds.

We didn’t do a fancy reel on Instagram about the summer holidays.

We did not fill every single day with activities.

We had days when we stayed home.

We still kept our routine.

We had slow days.

We had cheap days.

We enjoyed our completely free days.

And still had a brilliant summer.

This year just wasn’t the year for a holiday.

That’s okay.

There will hopefully be another year, another opportunity and another bag waiting to be dramatically overpacked. (Actually now been booked for next year!)

For now, we made the most of what we have.

Because sometimes the best adventures aren’t hundreds of miles away.

Sometimes they’re right on your doorstep.

And sometimes, quite honestly, they’re in the garden eating an ice cream whilst all squeezed into the paddling pool (yes we all did that!)

And that counts too.