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Not Quite Adulting: My Adult Moments

You’d think that at 31, having birthed 3 sprogs, been married then divorced, mortgaged up, 2 step kids and numerous pets – that I might consider myself a fully fledged adult. WRONG! Like many people I’ve asked on this subject, it’s not that I feel like a kid, but I certainly don’t feel like I’ve reached the peak of my grown-up-ness. Worringly, even my mum – a whole generation of adultier-ness above me, still doesn’t feel there yet. But perhaps being a grown-up isn’t a state, a bit like happiness, it’s fleeting moments; moments where it really feels as though I’ve got my shit together and I can do this – without doing a silly dance, asking for a straw with my coke or throwing a (discreet) tantrum when our local ice cream parlour runs out of cherry flavour on a particularly I-need-cherry-kinda-day ).

So, here’s my list of moments when I feel top of my adult game – in the vague hope, some of you might also feel the same about our severe lack of acknowledging our responsibilities and always hoping there will be an adultier adult to deal with the crap post fan-hit.

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10 Ways Thomson Holidays Busied Our Boys

Our family can be a logistical nightmare: ferrying the 14 year old to town to hang out with his friends whilst getting the 12 year old over to his mates house to play on the PlayStation, then herding the 8 & 9 year olds to a football match – meanwhile, poor little Casper gets dragged along on the promise of a jammy dodger. My point being, keeping all 5 boys entertained in one place is a huge ask. So when I started talking to Thomson about our latest family holiday (see more details here), my biggest challenge to them was to keep our brood so busy for a week, in the sun, that they wouldn’t pick up their iPad or whinge about not having their beloved PlayStations.

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Brexit: The Kids’ Questions

I usually shy away from blogging about the latest trending subject matter – fodder to soon become tomorrow’s chip paper’s just not my bag; neither, until the last few days was politics. But after Friday’s revelation that our fine and glorious country will be leaving the EU, many seem quite up in arms, upset, offended and brutally disappointed with the outcome. Panic not, I’m not about to wade into a political rant. This is not to berate or applaud either side of the argument, yes, we’ve all seen the enviable diplomacy of the Facebook friend that says “we all need to move forward together despite the decision”. This is simply to pose the questions asked by the generation this outcome will potentially affect the most – our children. On being informed of the Brexit on Friday morning, something which I’ve done my best to inform my otherwise pretty clueless sons about, these were the responses given from the 8 and 9 year old.

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Elderflower Fields Family Festival

When I received an email asking if we wanted to head to Elderflower Fields Festival in the days leading up to our first ever family holiday (which you can read about HERE), I was dubious and even typed out the declining email due to the mammoth packing task that lay ahead. But, of course, not before clicking the link to see what it was all about. About 30 seconds into my browsing experience, I retyped my email and it was a resounding YES! This was a family festival, taking place in the heart of the Sussex country side with a plethora of boy-friendly madness – although we couldn’t go for the whole weekend, we could certainly put the packing, washing and ironing to one side for a day trip of fun.

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Pre-Kidders on Planes

There’s an unspoken understanding between parents on planes: Do whatever the hell it takes to get through. Be it seat swapping, sweet giving, playing peekaboo over a seat, snorting the innards of a sherbet lemon in a vague hope of some legal high or simply accepting that normal rules will not apply for the duration of the flight. This seems to be if your children are aged 1, 10 or 33. If you’ve ever been a parent on an aircraft, you just get it. Then there’s those pesky people that fill up the family-void spaces on a plane: The pre-kidders or the people that made the life-choice to never have the little darlings (is it too late to make this choice?!).

Here’s just some of the questions and comments I would like to put to the pre-kidders who occupied 34A and 34B on our recent travels…

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