Rafferty's weekend

Just before Byron lost his job we were planning a family weekend away during the school holidays. Everything changed after that phone call and for obvious reasons we put on hold the weekend away as we tried to conserve the money we had not knowing how long it might take Byron to get a new job.

When Byron and myself both started in new jobs last week we decided that we should have the family break that we had been so looking forward to. And so after a phone call to Rafferty's resort at midday last Friday I found myself emailing Byron to come home as early as possible from work and I ran around packing everyones clothes, toothbrushes and swimmers. Gareth and Sian were still off school sick but we knew that we had no other free weekends in the next month so it was a case of going away with all the cough and cold mixtures and making the best of it.

We packed the car as soon as Byron got home and started the drive. We got there about 7pm and checked in to our little house and then went to the Thai restaurant on site for a lovely meal of green curry, satay skewers, spring rolls and fish cakes. The kids were sleeping at the table so we paid up and carried them back to their beds where they slept like logs waking for medicine for high temperatures in the early hours then back to sleep again.

The next two days were spent relaxing and enjoying spending time together with no computers, no phones ringing, just newspapers, magazines, walks and lots of lovely food.

Gareth and Rhiannon swung between looking like death warmed up with high temperatures and then once the medicine kicked in, running around on adrenaline until the medicine wore off again.

We made the best of their up time by going for walks and even managing to swim in the heated outdoor pool, and letting them sleep when they were down.

We had dinner in the fabulous Blue door Restaurant on the Saturday night and again had to pick a sleeping Gareth and Rhiannon up from where they had laid down in front of the warm heaters and carry them home.

My two favourite parts of the weekend are both chocolate related!

One was the round of coffees and hot chocolates we had in front of a roaring log fire one of the afternoons.

The other was the melted dark chocolate and fruit and marshmallows that we stuffed our faces with in the house for lunch on Saturday!