Another milestone in our year of change – A’s first half term break. It wasn’t only her that was more than ready for it. Life has felt extremely full in recent weeks between work, school, appointments and ongoing work on our little terraced garden.

It was perfect to get some actual and metaphorical breathing space at the foot of Snowdonia. We were prepared for the worst of Welsh weather, but were blessed with dry, and some glorious sunny days that showed off the autumn colours at their finest.

I finally found time to regularly do my physio exercises prescribed after my operation, and work on relaxing those muscles I had ‘yeah, yeahed’ my way through appointments about. I want to put it in writing that it has helped, to remind future Carly to do them!

It was a pleasure to spend some quality time with both children, one over a giant bag of crafts, and practicing phonics; the other crawling around at pace and experimenting with steps around our holiday cottage. Recently we’ve felt like we are throwing them from school to childcare to classes with half-eaten breakfasts in hand. A shame, though, like all much-needed breaks, our bodies took the signal to ‘stop’ a little too seriously and rewarded us with horrible colds. Thank goodness for the log burner at the end of windswept days.

We stayed at Castle Lodge in Harlech.