Half-term is always a parenting juggle, whether it be how to manage childcare while staying above the radar at work, maintaining your work-from-home business while your little angels climb all over you, demanding constant attention and snacking at 15 minute intervals consistently throughout the day, or simply the internal struggle we all face of how to amuse the children for the entire length of the holiday whist staying sane!

No sooner have we triumphed over the lengthy summer break, than we face the next interruption to the school year – it doesn’t feel like this for teachers for sure, but it most certainly does as a parent! Don’t get me wrong, I love having a change from the routine and extra time with my two beloved children but I also have a home to run, a business to attend to and a pair of lively boys to amuse daily and in the best way I possibly can.

The pressure is on parents these days with the rise of Pinterest peer pressure and if you aren’t crafting your socks off, baking up a cake to rival GBBO, or inventing photogenic, educational and imaginative games to play with your child then half-term holidays can fall very flat. Well, there’s nothing like the good old ‘great outdoors’ to give the Supermum army one in the eye!

Keep it simple with a trip to the farm, zoo or simply the park and guaranteed your children will be rosy cheeked and fulfilled by the end of the day. Since Harry was tiny, we have enjoyed going to Mead Open Farm, in each school holiday and over every season.  They are choc-full of themed activities for all times of the year.

Best of all, we chuck the contents of the fridge into a bag for our picnic and meet up with some of our loveliest friends and et voila – perfect day in a nutshell!

We embarked on our spooky day out with a little trepidation as my youngest is only 3 remember! He is articulate and quite mature for 3 (I feel) so I was expecting him to handle most aspects of spook rather well.  We had a wide mix of ages in our little outing and four mums in total, which is always handy when the need to split the age groups according to activities arises.

We stayed at the starting point,Topsy Turvy Towers, the huge outdoor play area,  for quite some time as we waited for everyone to arrive.

The weather was fab for October and we shed some layers and managed a lovely warm alfresco picnic lunch, before heading off to explore the delights of the rest of the vast expanse the farm covers.

There were some fantastic costumes on the children there, this trio were too cute not to photograph! We always bump into friends when we go to Mead. Check out Ma-Lia, Albie & Kymani who made a gorgeous, scary trio!

 

Between phantom tractor rides through scarily decorated fields, animal feeding, go-karts, indoor softplay, Hallowe’en exclusive haunted houses (individually tailored for each age range), digger village, sky trails and crazy golf, you can imagine how exhausted we were by the end of the day!

Mead has evolved over the years to adapt for families of all ages and tastes.  Every time we go, there is a new aspect to the farm and something even more exciting for the VIP’s we all take there.

I managed to capture Dominic’s first ever ‘big’ slide with his brother at Shaggy’s indoor play area on video!  One chuffed mummy, especially as he refused to do it again despite loving his maiden flight!

We kept returning to the lamb feeding as the kids couldn’t stop giggling whilst covering their ears at the racket this hungry lot made! Knowledgeable staff kept us informed of the needs of the young lambs.

And no farm visit would be complete without the obligatory bunny snuggling session! I took to this one who was loving the camera!

We stayed until chucking out time, the park preparing for their twilight spooky grown up antics. And we retired home, exhausted and thoroughly satisfied.  Cue a lovely sleep on the journey back to base for the kids and my fave thing, carrying sleeping babies into their bed after a full, fab day.

What did you get up to at half term?  Who was most exhausted, you or the children? 🙂

 

*We were given a complimentary family pass to MOF in return for this frank review