School's out for Summer!

If you've ever watched that scene in School of Rock when Jack Black's character as a substitute teacher legs it out of the classroom the second the bell rings getting to his camper van before the kids have even left the building, it'll give you some idea of how I will be feeling at 12:30pm tomorrow when we have officially broken up for 5 1/2 weeks!

If you've read my blog posts before you'll know how much I adore my job, but I'd be lying if somewhere near the very top of my list of things I enjoy about being a teacher you didn't see '13 weeks holiday a year!' We all know someone who gets defensive about how it's not 13 weeks holiday a year because of all the planning etc.etc. you have to do, but lets face it, of course it's 13 weeks holiday a year! Pretty much everyone in every job has to do things outside of their working hours and in my (not very wide I grant you) experience, the ones who get the most defensive about it are often the most work shy of all, generally being the ones who turn up at work at 8:45 and leave at 3:00! Of course I have things I'll need to do over the holiday and I'll need to go into school for a few days but it's nothing like actually being at work, and will it permeate that 'being on holiday' feel? Of course it won't, I won't let it!

Being a naturally quite lazy person, I always look forward to any day off, but this break is going to be a particularly special one for me for lots of reasons:

1. It'll be my first holiday since going back from maternity leave so I'll appreciate it in a way you don't when you're off anyway.
2. This will be my first summer in five years when I'm neither pregnant or breastfeeding so I'll be able to let my hair down a bit (in a responsible parent kind of way of course)!
3. This summer we are going our first ever family holiday. As my husband is an assistant head, we are all off together so it's a real family time. I guess it might be a nightmare for some but I love it! We're starting by going camping locally with three other couples who have children the same age as ours. We've got a huge new tent, which supposedly sleeps 9 but I like my space and luxuries whether I'm camping or not. My GHDs will definitely be joining us! We then have a week booked in France, where because we were disorganised and left everything until the last minute we managed to get the 'luxury' accommodation for the same price as the tent. I'm sure I don't need to tell you which we opted for. Hopefully the 1 hour and 20 minutes it took to get our (at the time) 7 month old baby to not roll over on the regulation white board for his passport photo will pay off.
4. The childrens' nursery still charges fees over the school holidays so we have decided to keep them both going throughout the holiday apart from when we are away. They often get unsettled if they haven't been there for a while, but it also means that my husband and I will have a whole day together each week when we can enjoy each other's company and do things that we can't do with the children. We're going shoe shopping, then to see Sex and the City 2 with my free Mullerlight vouchers on the first day, though he doesn't know that yet and I'm sure it's not what he had in mind when he thought of 'us' time!
5. We live in such a beautiful part of the country, and have so many wonderful days out at our disposal which cost absolutely nothing so we really have no excuses to not be excited! Here's some snaps which were all taken within a 10 minute drive from our house.

A lovely walk with one of Evie's best friends.

Harry's first trip to the beach last summer aged 2 1/2 weeks.

Evie's favourite day out at the Adventure Wonderland.

So there we have it. It's that time of year when any of my friends who are not teachers get all grumpy because they have to go to work and don't want to come round for a big party on a Tuesday night or nip out to join us for lunch in their lunch break, but I work sometimes 16 hour days when I'm at work and this is my reward! I hope all of you who have 6 weeks of family time at your disposal enjoy it and make the most of it - we really are very lucky people!