As the school holiday enters its final days, I can’t help but look back and reflect that this has been a particularly good summer. Life is good.

In fact, life is better than good. Life is great.

Over the past three months I’ve chalked up a number of memorable experiences, many of which would not have been possible if not for my blogging efforts.

The summer holidays have been bookended by two fantastic family trips. We started by going to Camp Bestival, our first festival together, at the end of July courtesy of Energizer. The kids had a whale of a time and took to the camping experience like ducks to water. That has been followed by a two-week holiday in France, taking in a week at Disneyland Paris and in the French capital itself, followed by a week with friends hiring a villa in the Alps. (More on that adventure next week.)

It hasn’t just been the kids who have been having fun though. Heather and I had lunch at Raymond Blanc’s Le Manoir aux’Quat Saisons – not the first time we have been there but it remains a special treat for us and one we are trying to turn into an annual tradition.

And, of course, there was both my radio debut and my inclusion at BritMums’ BML conference as one of the bloggers’ keynote speakers, where I conquered my nerves and performed my parody of the Psychedelic Furs’ Pretty in Pink to rapturous some applause.

Yes, it’s been quite a summer.

One of the changes I have noticed in myself in recent years is a greater willingness to do things that drag me out of my comfort zone that in the past I would have run a mile from. Someone (I forget who) once said to me that as you grow older you focus less on collecting things and more on collecting experiences. They were absolutely right.

Like I said, life is great. I wonder what the onset of autumn will bring?

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