Half Term

February half term was a little later in the month than I'm used to, but to me, it still felt like only a short time ago the kids were off for Christmas and here they were - off school for another week already.

I think I've been harping on about the weather in every Instagram or Facebook post since, but three days of the week that I was off with the kids it really was lovely.

They say opposites attract and that is most definitely true of Mark and me in most aspects of our life. I get cabin fever and start going stir crazy if I'm in the house for too long, Mark is a proper homebody and is quite happy spending his days off remote in hand watching the football. This is why I'm glad I work most weekends (and so is he, probably) But the odd day off we have together I can usually persuade him to come for a Picnic with us.

On the Monday of half term, we grabbed the chance of being outdoors and made use of our National Trust passes for the first time this year. Bodnant Gardens is a great place to walk the kids to tire them out. They had a treasure hunt to keep the kids occupied, they had to find flowers in particular colours and add a sticker to their chart when they found one. Mark is all over anything like that as he is so competitive. I'm quite happy because it means I am free to wander around with my camera snapping photos.

We stopped off at the Golden Arches on the way home as a treat. Well, it was a treat for the kids because they love it, and a treat for Mammi because I didn't have to cook.

There's a country park not so far away from us, one that we'd not been to before. I am a big fan of "Free" days out and Holyhead's Breakwater Country Park is a great spot for a walk and a picnic. One of my friends lives on that side of the island so we met with her en route so she could show us the way there. As we had anticipated, it was very busy with other families having had the same idea as us. But we managed to snag a bench for the picnic (the kids would eat every single meal as a picnic if we let them)

There's usually a cafe open at there, but it was closed on the day we visited. We made our back to the car and stopped to let the kids have a run around the play area on Newry Beach instead. As we were closer to the sea, it was noticeably colder there though the kids didn't seem to notice.

On the Wednesday, we arranged to go to Colwyn Bay Mountain Zoo. My parents have brought the kids here a few times but I haven't been for years. Mark loves going to the Zoo, we prefer Chester Zoo even though it's far more expensive.

To make the most of our day we arrived at 10am, the first place the kids wanted to go was to the play area to use the slides and the zip wire. Little Lwsi, my Goddaughter was in a pram and because of there are works going on at the zoo, we really struggled to get around. We made our way to watch the Sea Lion show and eat our picnic. Being out of season really, there was only a couple of animal shows taking place that day. Unfortunately, that wasn't reflected in the admission fee.

If you've made it this far, well done :)

The kids have been back at school for a week and we've quickly returned to our normal routine (I love the term time routine) Luckily we haven't got long until the Easter Holidays and I've already been making plans for days out then too. Let's hope for some lovely spring sun.

GM
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