Quidam_Ela: First family holiday

Last November we went to Center Parcs for our first family holiday. Gareth and I were a bit concerned as we would be sharing a room with Rowan. He has had his own room since he was 3 months old, so we wondered how a sleep-over would work out. We had nothing to worry about and we all managed to sleep relatively well. Although there was one morning where I had to slowly retract my foot from Rowan's reach, as he had woken up, grabbed my toes and started saying "mummy mummy" on repeat. The photos were taken with my old camera so I'll apologise now for the poor quality. Regardless of blur, red eye, over-exposure etc. I'm grateful that I have been able to record our family memories, so thank you trusty old camera!

Tree covered in Christmas lights.

Center Parcs really go to town at

Christmas

When I booked the break I hadn't realised that it coincided with the Winter Wonderland period. There were lots of Christmas themed activities and decorations to entertain us, and despite only booking one activity (Santa's grotto for Rowan) we were not short on things to do. Rowan particularly loved the animatronic singing reindeer, and every morning the first thing Rowan said was "reindeer, reindeer." There were real reindeer right next to these comical Rangifer tarandus but Rowan wasn't the slightest bit interested in them. The zoologist in me was a little disappointed by my son's indifference.

Rowan was mesmorised by the singing reindeer. Every day entailed a visit to listen to

them sing

Sorry real-life reindeer. Not today

We spent a lot of our time in the subtropical swimming pool which Rowan loved. He adores water, and so he had a great time going around the children's rapid pool. Gareth even took him down the small water slide with him. Gareth and I were able to go for a lone swim each on one evening, when we took it in turns to watch Rowan. It was so relaxing swimming through the warm water whilst cold November rain dashed on your face.

The outdoor rapids. You can see the steam

rising from the heat of the pool

Looking at Santa's 'magic river' (blue and silver baubles

floating in a stream)

Waiting to meet Santa. I had to turn the

flash off to prevent the whole image being

over-exposed, so unfortunately it came out

blurry

Inside the plaza. These are all real plants,

and there were goldfish and koi in large

pools along the path

We ended up returning home 1 day early as Rowan had started to come down with a nasty cold, but we didn't feel like we had cut the holiday short. We all had a fun break, and enjoyed spending some rare quality time together.