travel Archives - Page 3 of 4 - The Only Girl in the House

Jess September, 2016

Family Car Journey | Nostalgia Lane – KFIS

Day 47 (and the last day) of the summer holidays: The kids have been piled in and out of the car on six separate occasions today to head to yet another fun filled activity. Each trip undoubtedly ends with “can we go home yet?” as the excitement wears off and they suss that I’ve again stung them with a cheap-skate trip to the beach or park. But isn’t that what summer holidays are about? Filling your days with wholesome, outdoorsy activities that feed your parents’ souls, make for cracking Instagram updates and will, eventually my little cherubs, make for joyous, nostalgic memories.

When I look back on my childhood, it was a much quieter one than my children are being subjected to. I was an only child with a small, close knit family – the kind that were civilised enough to venture on a nine hour, family car journey every summer to visit my aunt and uncle in Scotland, without feeling like all sanity might be lost by the time we hit the M25. It was on one of these mammoth escapades that my tale unfolded…

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Jess August, 2016

Family Travel: Toddler Must-Haves

With the summer holidays in full flow and the mass exodus from the classroom many of you lucky buggers will be jetting of to warmer climes for your hols – something we did back in the half term (you can read all about it here and even see the vid here!). At the time we were rather smug at the idea of going away before everyone else, with the optimism of summer laying before us – now we just watch on with green eyes as you holiday spam my insta-feed from gorgeous destinations. But hopefully our premature jaunt to the sun has filled me with holiday wisdom to share – to bring you the bits I couldn’t have gone that week without (and at the bottom, the bits I want to kick to bloofy Jupiter). Ok, well I probably could’ve survived a Greek, all-inclusive resort without these items, but it would have been a lot more stressful (yes, even more stressful than travelling as a family of 7!).

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Jess July, 2016

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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Jess June, 2016

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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Jess June, 2016

First Family Holiday with 5 Kids

It was this time last year when I cautiously made my way over to the Thomson Holiday’s stand (actually a replica airplane) at the spectacular Blogtacular conference. Like many of the bloggers in attendance I fancied a go at pitching my holiday idea to the company behind sending so many British families on their hols every year. I challenged Thomson Holidays to keep our 5 boys so entertained for a week in the sun that they wouldn’t be tempted by their gadgets – and they accepted!

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