Day 4 starts with us all packing our bags as we are going Swimming! Well I say swimming, Blackburn Waves is hardly swimming....but nevertheless we are going to a public place where there is a lot of water and slides and waves and a jacuzzi!

Unfortunately the car decides to not work and we are stuck in with 2 unhappy children! After 10 minutes of thinking of an alternative, we decide to hop on a bus and go into town. I am pleasantly surprised at the cost of a family ticket into Bolton town centre, £8.60 to  be exact!....Return aswell! Anyway the kids seem to be taking it all in their stride and enjoying every minute. Could it possibly be something to do with the fact that we are all together and wherever we go doesn't really matter? I think so.

We end up in the town centre where we grab some lunch at the pound bakery! Now for all you parents out there this is a much cheaper alternative than say McDonalds or subway, there may be a few families from Breightmet there (joke!) with their 25 children all eating sausage rolls, even the baby has a bottle in one hand and a sausage roll in the other!.....but it's cheap and very tasty.

We move on to the Milkshake bar. I wish I worked here!  You can basically get any kind of choc, sweets, biscuits of your choice and they put it into a freshly made milkshake! Genius! The kids love it. Me and Rich treat ourselves to a.....wait for it........A COFFEE! Woo hoo we know how to live!

The kids spend a few quid on stuff that kids want to spend their money on ie stickers, bath bombs and fake glasses! Rich buys himsef some new pumps, myself a pair of sunglasses and we're all happy with the days purchases.

We head back home...ON THE BUS......laugh, chat and take random pictures. All in a days work/holiday!

The kids are sleeping at grandma's tonight, but as we've no car me and Rich stay in with a curry and watch a DVD.

Perfect, if I do say so myself.

Day 3 of the Reid family holiday.......The sun is out woo hoo!! couldn't of asked for better weather today, as we have planned a bike ride on the Tissington trail near Buxton. Rich assures me that it takes around 45 minutes to get there............2 hours later we arrive at the said destination! I am reminded of a particular Simpson episode, were the kids continually ask...Are we nearly there yet! according to Rich its just up the road, according to mum..No we're flippin not! ha!

We arrive and the kids are 'starving' so we get out the picnic and eat lunch, all refuelled and ready to go! The trail itself is about 15 miles long, but then we would have to turn around and ride back, so we decide to get as far as we can before the car park ticket runs out! All in all we cycled about 10 miles, not bad for a family of four. 

It's funny the difference between children and their personalities....Olivia strolls along stopping to pick flowers as if she's on the set of Downton Abbey, whereas Jeremi......Competetive in nature is always at the front and resembles a tiny blue dot in the distance! Love it!

Me however.....why would I ever think that I could cycle all that way without hurting?! My legs are like jelly, my neck feels broke and my bottom...well I will stop there.

We arrive back at the car park around 5 o'clock load up the bikes, kids and injured parties and set off back home.

Another great day as a family.............please no more strenuous, physical activities..............SWIMMING, who put swimming on the plan!! (think i may have to accidentally lose this weekly plan!!)

Day 2 of the Reid family holiday. (a geordie accent necessary!) Rain, rain and more rain...however we are not deterred and venture over to 'the original Reids'...aka mum and dad, Jan and Rik or Grandma and Grandad! According to our 'Plan for the week' we are supposed to be going Geo - caching. For all you uneducated people out there, its basically like a treasure hunt, following maps to find the locations of a 'cache'...but in todays age, you can use sat nav to find exact locations. Once found, you leave something in the cache, and take something out...a bit like a souvenir. You write your name and date down on the paper inside and leave it where you found it for someone else to find...etc etc. Its fun Honest!! And the kids love it!

As the rain is absolutely not for letting up, we have a picnic lunch indoors followed by a game of scattergories, where the best team won...obviously the one I was on!! By this time the rain didn't seem too bad and the kids were getting a little bit of cabin fever, so we decide to go for it. We headed off to the Tockholes and found 5 Caches!

Although a tad wet (an understatement!) we made our way back to the car...only to find that our battery was dead! ha! How funny is that!........not very....when you are soaked to the bone and all you need is nice hot shower and a cuppa. But...we are The Reids, nothing was gonna spoil our family adventures this week, not even rain or a dead battery! pfft!

We arrived back home a little later than planned, where fresh pancakes was the vote for a nice quick tea. You know the kind.......teeth rotting, sweet and sugary kind. Awesome! Fire and heating both on, where we can fully warm up our cockles! Not forgetting the hot chocolate of course....

Another successful day for the Reids. If you define successful as being conditioned to your circumstances, then you could say, it was a flop....but if you dare to define it by the memories you are making with the people you decide to make them with, then......yes it was an extremely successful day. Thank God for that......(even the rain)

Today is the first official day of the holiday. It begins around 10am which normally for us on a sunday would look quite hectic, but is very different today as we casually get up and have breakfast. The weather is dry, at least for now, and the cupboards are bare!! Time for a family trip to ASDA!! YAY! The kids usually by this point are very unenthusiastic.....but as we label everything with the words  'holiday' or 'fun' or 'adventure'.....we seem to  manage to get away with it. And off we go! We arrive back around an hour and a half later, have lunch, and refer 

back to our Family plan for theweek!, which tells us we're off to Moss bank Park! So off we go!.The sun is really shining now, but we pack our rain coats....just in case. We do live in the north you know!

A fun time was had as we did the things that you normally do at a park, we visited the 'Animal Kingdom' which I use the term very loosely...as it seems to only have a few select birds, guinea pigs and a couple of peacocks! It now costs 50p, but the butterfly house seemed somewhat more active than usual which made up for for the cost! Uncle Paul always seems to spring to mind as we wander through.....not sure why though! (ask him).

The kids were excited to show Dad the newly renovated Rock Gardens, which to be fair...are rather lovely. It was soon time to head home, so we grabbed a rather expensive ice-cream from the shop, and chilled on a bench opposite the tree that rather looks like the 'Weeping willow' from Harry Potter. 

Its a good first day of the 'Holiday' and as we sit watching a DVD back at home, I am reminded, just how grateful I am to belong to a family, and to be able to share my life with others that I love so much. Bring on Day 2!