Spring Break

Well, it's not the Easter holiday, because Easter was 2 weeks ago, but the kids are now off school for a fortnight before the summer term starts in earnest. I haven't heard a peep out of them. They're in the playroom building a dinosaur zoo out of Lego, and I daren't go and disturb them because then they will start to squabble and bicker which, I have come to the conclusion, is all for my benefit. Best to keep my head down, providing zoo keeper refreshments and snacks as unobtrusively as possible.

There is an age gap of five and a half years between my children. My son is 10 and my daughter almost 5. For a couple of years it was quite difficult to find activities that they would both enjoy outside of the home, but now things are settling down quite well: they enjoy playing together, as long as I'm nowhere within earshot so my son doesn't feel I'm eavesdropping on their role-playing, and since my daughter has learned how to ride her bike without stabilisers and can finally get round a pitch and putt course without getting hysterical (which is, let's face it something that I've only relatively recently been able to do myself), there is more scope for the things we can do together as a family outdoors too.

But today the weather is just too cold for persuading the kids to be outside. I'm not too worried, we're off to Paris tomorrow on the train. We're going for a couple of days seeing the sights of the City of Lights and checking out Disneyland. It'll be an interesting trip - especially as it's our first holiday entirely on the train! We have to leave Swindon at 5.30 am, then we're catching the Eurostar from St Pancras. We're hoping to arrive in Paris just before lunch.

We've decided to stay in Paris itself rather than base ourselves at Disney. We've got a family room booked at the Novotel close to the Gare de Lyon, which is where the train out to Disney leaves from. So we're hoping to get a mix of culture and theme park over the next few days. I'll write an account of our trip here when we get back!