On holiday as a solo parent with three small children and God showed up!

I love the school holidays. Some people think it’s weird that I like to spend time with my children, but in all honesty, when the last week of school finally comes, I think I’m probably more excited than they are!

I became a solo parent when I was five months pregnant with my daughter. The boys were four and 17 months old. I was so determined that I would give them every opportunity that two-parent families had, and that included holidays. This both filled me with excitement and terror. Where would we go? How could I cope with three toddlers on my own? How would we afford it? What would happen if there was an emergency whilst we were away? But the overriding thought was, what if I don’t give them the opportunity to experience time away from our home and explore the world around us? So the planning began.

Our first holiday was to a small house near the coast of Wales. We were given some money from a couple at church with the instructions that we were to go on holiday (I’m not sure how dishevelled I looked at this stage). I crammed the car full of everything that we might need, including two bikes, a bike tag along and no pushchair, and off we set. I’d done very little research into the area, so we spent most of the two weeks driving down to the coast and finding some places that my children would like to go. They were five, three and 18 months at this point. My eldest still remembers that holiday. He remembers speaking Welsh with the lady who owned the farm we stayed on, the cows we watched being milked every morning, the castles we visited, the beaches we played on and the miles of coastline that we cycled down. I’m grateful that those memories outweigh my memories of tiredness, struggling with a tiny budget and the backache from carrying my daughter in a backpack because I intentionally left the pushchair at home. Although it was hard for me, I am grateful that it was fun for them. I learnt so much from that holiday, mostly about what not to do