Holiday in Wales

Ok so it's that time of the year, kids on leave and Devon full of tourists so it's about time we left the county and took the kids and dogs away for a break.

This year we had a couple of new additions, firstly Laatu who at 11 week sof age was coming away on his first of many holiday with us, secondly Josh invited his best friend Ethan to come away with us for the 2 weeks (Ethan and Josh spend a lot of time at each other houses and Josh had already been away on hols with Ethan's family in May) and finally the last new additional was our caravan :-) fed up with the hassle of the folding camper or hiring of motorhomes we took the plunge and bought a caravan to make the future trips to dog shows with camping much more fun.

So with caravan and car fully loaded we headed off to Wales. It had already started raining of course.

We are very lucky and have some great friends who met us on site and had us set up within an hour, caravan, awning and fencing. While this was in process Laatu and Tarkka stayed with Shelley over at her caravan and Laatu kindly dug a hole in her garden (sorry Shelley).

During our stay Laatu escaped twice but all in all it was a success. We took a puppy pen and so Laatu had a safe area of the awning he could play in that allowed us to go over and eat with friends, play cards have sing alongs.

As you can see Tarkka and Laatu seem happy in their holiday home.

Lets also not forget the neighbours

So what did the children do all day? Well they spent a lot of time out on their bikes and skateboards, playing badminton, we went canoeing at Brecon, Steve Cooper took them fishing (we are not allowed to say how many the kids caught vs Steve) and lets not forget the rounders and tag rugby.

Then we had the chance to celebrate Andy and Karen Lee's 25th wedding anniversary with a BBQ and street party (Lappy Lane)

With 24 of us for dinner it seemed like a good time for Laatu to have lots of cuddles with everyone.

Then Aunty Shelley and Aunty Kay let Laatu have a bit of Andy and Karens anniversary cake and a sip of champagne!

I must explain at this point that Laatu did better on the chocolate cake and champagne than Josh who was a tad sick that night :-(

We then had a few days of overcast weather which made no difference to the dogs who now enjoyed the routine of eating, sleeping and going for walks meeting lots of other dogs and people at the showground and also out and about in Builth Wells and Brecon. I also got the chance to take Josh and Ethan swimming and we went canoeing for 3 hours zig zagging along the canal crashing into the riverbank and getting attacked by bramble bushes while George walked Tarkka and Laatu around Brecon and then sat and waited for us to return.

All was not lost with the weather as Chris and Terry kindly brought some sunshine down with them and Terry also brought his guitar so we could have a sing song in the evenings but more importantly with the sun back out it meant we could have port and cheese in the afternoons.

Terry give me some of your port

Kippis

Thanks for sharing Uncle Steve, I'm holding the glass in case you change your mind, I know you lot and I gather this is the sixth bottle of port you've all drank this afternoon

Uncle Gavin I'm feeling a little sleepy now

So with the holiday coming close to an end we realised it was time to get Tarkka ready for the show

Mum you say I'm going bald, I think I have a bit more hair than dad

So show day arrived which also sparked the end of our holiday so while Tarkka and I went over to the show with Josh and Ethan, George stayed behind with Laatu and with a lot of help from Steve packed the caravan down.

Why do I have to stay here

I'm really proud of Tarkka as he got 3rd in Post Grad.

Thanks boys for taking some photo's

So all in all we had a great holiday but Laatu sums it up showing us that holidays are all about chilling out!

Holidays are such hard work