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The true story behind those happy holiday pictures.

Untersbergbahn, Salzburg. I posted this after we caught a gondola up a mountain in Austria. We had been in the car for 3 hours, the kids were less than enthusiastic about the plans for the day, Elsie practically had a melt down on the gondola, once at the top – I remembered I’m scared of heights, I spent the entire time screaming at the children to move away from the edge. We decided that an icy pole might help. We bought the wrong icy pole, so Dave trekked halfway down the hill to get another icy pole, which Asher then dropped and of course cried. All of a sudden the stars aligned, the beer arrived and we managed ONE nice snap of the family.

Umag, Croatia. This photo…. the last 15km of our journey took over 2 1/2 hours as we were stuck in horrendous traffic. The GPS took us on a hair raising detour that ended up shaving zero time off our journey (as we merged into traffic behind the same car we were behind 25 minutes earlier). The humourless Croatian border controller, who sighed when I told her I’d left the girls Dutch ID’s at home (apparently, you need these AS WELL as your passports). We arrived in 45 degree heat. Checked in, threw our swimmers on – no swimming nappies (cue fight between Mum and Dad). A somewhat challenging dinner with 3 tired kids. Dave took a howling Ash to bed and the girls and I went for a swim (after we navigated our way across 20 metres of rocks, each felt like a piece of lego under foot). Here’s our smiling Instagram photo….

We travelled 40 minutes in the car. Asher fell asleep just as we arrived, then cried the entire 2km walk to the rockiest, most un-child friendly swimming spot with no shade. Ash then screamed for no reason – Dave’s is yelling at everyone to just ‘shhhh and enjoy’. Then we realised his swimming suit was rubbing and he’s red raw on his upper leg and the sunscreen mixed with the salt water sends him into a frenzy. People start muttering under their breath and packing up their things. We jumped in and out of the water, took a selfie and went back to the resort and swam in the pool.

Munich, Germany. Another long drive from Slovenia to Munich. Asher threw such a tantrum, jumping up and down that his pants actually fell down and there he is on the street, people giving him a wide berth and his sisters and I couldn’t help but laugh. Found a beer garden (sensational beer garden Augustiner Biergarten) with a playground. Wasps everywhere. Kids couldn’t navigate the playground with assistance. Mum in the playground (least favourite place to be), Dad trying to establish how this beer garden thing works, there were about 20 different food stands, Dave surveys each one, comes back and hour later and instead of ordering something, rattles off his findings. He heads back to the stand. Another hour later, we end up with a bucket of beer, pork knuckle and schnitzel. Kids didn’t touch any of it. Dave and I did!