So how to cope with a chronic illness and summer holidays?

This is something I'm still working on tbh.  Admittedly I use a fair bit of the "electronic babysitter" to make holidays more survivable.  I'm a single mum, so when they're up so am I, and sometimes it is incredibly hard.

I've put a few things in place to try and make life a little easier for all of us. We're lucky because we have a decent sized garden.  I find it hard to manage at times (I have friends who mow the lawn as I can't manage it myself, unless I want to cripple myself for days and my parents help me to keep it under control, with weeding, cutting back and so on) - the benefits we get from it are huge though.

So in the garden we have a trampoline, slide, toy cars, swing ball set, bikes and scooters - most of these are secondhand, ebay or gifts - its worth keeping an eye out as you can get some good deals if you search for them.  From a learning/health point of view we also have strawberries, blueberries, hopefully blackberries and raspberries in a year or 2 as well as an established apple tree that was here when we moved in.  All of these plants are nicely low maintenance, the kids love to water them and pick the fruit - and normally eat it before I see it!  The apples get turned into apple crumble and chutney when they're ready.  The plants aren't hard work, and we get lots of good from them.  We have 6 tomato plants thriving in the greenhouse (again generally watered by the children, although I need to remind them as they're looking a bit dry!)  All of these mean that if I'm too ill to go to the park or take them out the kids can burn lots of energy and have fun outside, and I have a lovely camping chair I can use outside to sit with them.

Here they are: 

Inside we have a lot of toys.  My living room I'd love to be a haven of tranquility, but really its a play room.  When I'm feeling very rough, I can sit in my recliner with my laptop or crochet, and a blanket most of the year, and the children can play, Conor's current obsession is the Octonauts, and as he's just had his birthday our house is now rather full of plastic Octonauts toys.  I am working on containing them but they come out again every day!  

Caitlin is very crafty, so we do quite a few crafty things too...I do get a little frustrated with messy crafting, mainly because of all the energy it takes to clean up, but yesterday they had loads of fun with playdough for quite a while.  I must remember to take photos!  Caitlin made some very interesting multicoloured monsters :)

This was the fun we had making teachers gifts early in the week 

We've bought the Sainsbury's summer activity book this year, it looks like it has a lot of ideas in there, plus we can keep a diary of all the things we do in the scrap book it has in there.  Pinterest is another great (highly addictive) source of information, that we use regularly.  A lot of Conor's birthday ideas came directly from there.  I'll do another post on that soon.  We had a lot of fun, especially creating a party theme, but it was a lot of work and quite exhausting.  

On a good day we'll be off down to our local park, which has an amazing paddling pool.  Its fantastic fun for them, but a strain for me (I end up in a lot of pain if I can't sit properly, plus there is the physical effort of getting there with the things we need - I have contemplated driving there and paying to park even though its only a few (normal persons) minutes to walk away, takes me about half an hour to get back from there now), so not something we do anywhere near as often as they or I would like.  If I could transport my home comforts there with a click of my fingers I would.  

Today I need to rest, as tomorrow we're off out.  We're taking my mum wedding outfit shopping, which'll mean a bit of a drive for me, then I'll be handing the children over to their dad for 2 whole nights after they have lunch with us.  I'm looking forward to catching up on some sleep and uninterrupted crafting time while they're gone, although I really miss them too.  

We have lots of plans for the summer, not least of which will be a week away camping, which will include the Natural Mamas Big Camp  - our 3rd year there and the children and I really can't wait.  It's an awesome event full of fantastic people.  I get to see some great friends, and my lovely children will have a whale of a time running wild!  We have fairy house building, camp fires, a waldorf doll making workshop for me and loads more all planned.  And fingers crossed I may even come back with a head of dreadlocks....

I really enjoy having my children with me for the summer, there is a lot less stress as we don't have to worry about school runs and rushing around, we can just stick to our own relaxed times.  Caitlin is booked into a free activity week with our local church which I know she'll love.  It's great to be able to relax in pjs too with no plan to get dressed all day as well!