Yesterday was a day that was a mixture of joy and sadness, of chaos and calm. 

Yesterday was supposed to be the start of a wonderful few days of family quality holiday time in Skegness.

We woke all excited,I’m sure the big boy was ready to explode as he was so looking forward to his holiday. We woke, packed the car and trailer, you don’t travel light with children with complex needs and off we went. Four hours later we arrived at the caravan we were meant to be staying in to find it already occupied. A family situated and enjoying their own holiday.

Now as you can imagine we were gutted, the holiday had been a gift to us from a charity and somehow there had been a mixup and now we were over a 150 miles from home with two complex children and one annoying teenager and we were now officially holiday homeless. 

To say I felt sick was an understatement, the boys were getting distressed, hungry and tired and generally fed up after being in the car for 4 hours. Alan my husband was tired from driving and myself let’s just say there was a few tears.

The children had been so excited especially my big boy he had been constantly signing caravan for the last few days, he couldn’t grasp why we were waiting outside a caravan and not going in, to be honest nor could I.

I’m not going to name the charity here as that wouldn’t be fair as it was a genuine mistake and they were genuinely upset. They do amazing things for families with disabled children and I don’t want this cock up to take from that but yesterday I was at my wits end. The idea of having to tell my children that we had to return home without a holiday was so upsetting, I could barely breathe for the sadness.

I took to Twitter and Facebook to share our plight in hope that someone could help, had some ideas etc. We had been calling local caravan parks to see if anyone had any availability but as it was the first week of the school holidays everywhere was booked solid. 

A few friends searched the Internet for me trying to find us somewhere to stay and we had just given up and was preparing to tell the children, “sorry we have to go home” when my friend messaged me that 45 minutes down from where we were a Park Resorts had limited availability.

One phone call later we were on our way.

I can’t tell you how grateful I am to friends for searching the web for me, just reaching out to support us when to be honest I was close to falling apart. 

We are now curled up in a lovely caravan on the Sunny Dale site of park resorts and it’s wonderful .

Yes it’s going to be a little different than we planned the holiday to be. For example we hadn’t saved the money for the caravan as we didn’t think we had to after having a midweek break gifted but we are here and whilst we are a few hundred pounds lighter we are determined to make the most of the next few days. The boys are happy and besides having no phone signal Brodie is happy as well. 

The caravan here at Park Resorts is beautiful, our welcome to the site was lovely. So far so good, we are excited to have a few wonderful days just making memories and spending quality time together as a family.

Right now I’m just trying to breathe again, I cannot say yesterday was the worse day of my life, because as you know after losing a child the worst day will always be then, but yesterday was truly horrible. I’m still emotional thinking about it. Yet right now I have three children counting on me to make this holiday fun and special, so that’s what I’m going to do. 

We are now on an amazing site ( thank you Park Resorts and it a lovely caravan. We are also so excited to visit the local seal sanctuary and explore what else this beautiful area has to offer.

Holidays don’t always need you to spend lots of money they just need a little inspiration and a lot of laughter. 

So here’s to making some memories.