Finally, The Holidays Have Arrived

We have been waiting for the school holidays to arrive for a long time. The temperatures have risen and the first few heat waves are always the worst, the body takes time to adapt. With the heat, the children complain and fight with each other more often. We don’t know how everything has gone yet, but the end of school and their final exams have all passed.

Finally, the summer has arrived! The day the kids finished school we came for a few days to the beach at a house that one of my uncles has let us use. Some of the children in college are still not finished, they still have some work to do and exams to take. But they’ll come soon enough to spend some time at the beach with us. These days are time for family, a time where we can spend together laying in the sand under the hot sun. This beach has a lot of iodine in the water, and since the 1930’s my parents would come here to get some sun and bathe in the iodine-rich waters. The Brothers of Saint John of God have a Hospice nearby where they care for the sick and abandoned children.

The hours at the beach under the sun are perfect for getting together and just listening to the sound of the waves. It’s a beach that means a lot to us and our entire family. After 4 days of doing nothing but recharging, we will begin the 2 months of school holidays.

At home, we sat down together to make the list of chores and aspects of our lives that we are going to work on this summer. All of us help and write down each thing we believe we can get better at. There is always someone who complains and argues and then we decide that their challenge for the summer is that they can only complain or argue once a day. There’s also always someone who tries to escape the table after a meal when it’s their turn to do the dishes. Their improvement is to be more consistent at this chore and to do it as a service for the others with a smile. All the children also make a list of books that they would like to read, hopefully, some books in other languages as well.

Of course, it’s also a time to get better in sports. When they were younger there was always one child who would list an improvement such as learning how to swim or how to ride a bike. How lucky we are to have the summer to learn so many new things!

While the older children are busy working in their jobs, I like to stay nearby Barcelona around the mountains. Because it’s close, the children that are working can come and spend the weekend with family where it’s a little bit cooler. I am quite lucky because my work allows me to work remotely anywhere online and part-time.

Every day they also have their schedule, much more relaxed than during the school year, but the kids need to know what they will be doing each day: what time they should wake up, when to clean the rooms, breakfast with the family and the times they should take care of their chores, when to study (they have their vacation notebook) so they don’t get out of the rhythm of studying… With regards to the chores, this gives them the opportunity to learn something new: cooking, cleaning the house, or doing laundry…

We are lucky to be in a house that has a garden, so we also have a lot of gardening work that needs to be done. So we spent almost two hours collecting leaves, pulling weeds, hedging, and sweeping… We are a team so when someone gets tired, we motivate each other to keep working. At the end comes the well-deserved dip in the municipal swimming pool. The truth is that when we and the cousins arrive at the pool, everyone notices.

As you well know, in our family the lunch is a very important moment for us. In the summer, every day one of the children cooks and we have a MasterChef challenge in pairs of two and we rank them. After that, we have a short time for a nap, board games or reading. And when there isn’t too much sun or heat sometimes we go out for a hike, some of them up to two hours 😊

During the summer vacation, the kids have a lot of free time and it’s important to organize it all. Some of them go to summer camps for a few days. It’s important to take a pen and paper and organize the summer very well if you have several children. At the end of summer, I like to make a summary of what we all have learned and what are some things we could do better next year. I encourage you all to try it 😊

Summer vacation is so much fun with the family! What plans do you have this year? What are the things that your children enjoy the most?

 

This post was originally published on comoserfelizconunodostreshijos.com on June 25th, 2018.