Cooking Focaccia With Fire - Bread In The Pizza Oven

On Bank Holiday we had a bit of an easy day and decided to lots of cooking and baking. We decided to have some friends over as well to have pizza from the earth oven. 

I set our Middlest to lighting the fire and getting it going. She was very proud of it, only asking me to help her push it back into the main part of the oven. she maintained it all afternoon as well, stoking it often. 

Children On Holiday Without Screens

 Well almost - we had a TV...

Our Children have tablets, but they only get to use them for a few hours on a Saturday and Sunday at home, we've always felt that was enough. Our eldest now has to have a phone for her diabetes and would have had one for high school anyway. She's been good with it though, (I'm easily the worst for too long on my phone) and only uses it really to check her blood sugar levels and to take lots of photos (most of these in this post are hers - used with her permission). 

For our holiday we decided that the tablets would stay at home. We've never had any entertainment for them in the car either other than the occasional audio book we can all listen to together (I hate to see kids watching a TV on the headrest of the seat in front, cut off from conversation). 

I think it's served us well over the years. They learn to be bored and entertain themselves and each other. 

Holiday In Norway - Of Fiords And Trolls

 So this is going to be a bit of a photo dump of a holiday post. I might do a few more posts later on of different things we did. 

It was a dream holiday by all accounts. We hired a car (which gave us lots of freedom), we rented a cabin (with a hot tub), we took some trips, made some up ourselves, had some very rainy days, under packed for the weather. 

It was an expensive trip for us, but we worked out it actually worked out far less than some of our friends spend on an all inclusive holiday to the sun. 

The ferry to Rosendale

Thoughts on Children Travelling

So I have mixed views about travelling these days. Part of me thinks that we shouldn't travel much, due to the ecological costs of it all. Then I think for how little we do, ours is a drop in a very big ocean. I probably don't even drive 3000 miles a year anymore. 

I do think about travel when I was younger and how it helped form me and made me realise what was important in life. 

I can remember coming back from travelling for 3 months when I was 19 and I overheard my uncle talking to my dad a few weeks later, "He went a boy, but he's come back a man." I smiled as I walked quietly away from that one. I had come back with direction, sure in what I wanted in life. 

The three months were incredible, I went coast-to-coast across America with a friend (via Greyhound bus), then went to New Zealand and Australia on my own for a few months. Suddenly I was very far away from my support network and had to work everything out for myself. Admittedly they were very easy countries to travel, but I was only 19, just into becoming an apprentice. I hitchhiked, didn't always book in advance and realised that being calm and going with the flow sometimes just worked. Something I showed my wife years later when we travelled around Europe in a converted ambulance with nothing booked other than two ferries. 

I went on holiday with my parents only until about 14, I then looked after the farm instead, having someone good with the stock was important to dad. I also think I used to drive dad mad that my head would be in a book every time we'd stop on holiday anyway, its something we sometimes talk about, but I'm not sure how I'd feel about leaving one of my children behind at that age. It was a different time though and I'm fairly sure I was happy to have the house to myself (my cousin would stay at night).  But I can remember travelling to France and Luxemburg and I remember that feeling of being in a different country, walking to get bread, everything that little bit different. 

An Emergency On Holiday - CPR

Before I share the good parts of the holiday I wanted to write down a story from our time away that isn't really very positive. I write things up here, sometimes to share, sometimes as my own form of therapy, and sometimes as a record. 

This is more to get it out of my head and on to the page. It took a bit of decompressing afterwards, in fact it still does. 

I'm a firm believer that no one remembers mediocre times, you remember the good and the bad. It forms you. And this is one of those that I'm sure I'll always remember, but not because it was a happy holiday memory. 

Our holiday was self catering, thankfully - I should add as, restaurants are few and far between and for 5 of us to eat out it would break the bank each time. Even shopping in the supermarket was expensive, although I always think it's a bit of an adventure shopping in a foreign land, looking at the different food and through it their culture. 

On this particular day we drove up to the nearest supermarket to our cabin. It was brand new with a huge parking lot, we parked along the side and walked in. 

My Middlest and I were having a little falling out (her too stroppy, me too hot headed), so as we walked in my wife went off with the other two while we had a chat. Just as we started to talk I heard a bang from behind us. I lifted my head and turned to see what had happened.