our perfect holiday #MarkWarnerMum

My Christmas wish this year is to be chosen to be a #MarkWarnerMum

At Blogfest I spoke to some lovely people on the Mark Warner stand and had some lovely orange juice (aren't I exciting!) - thank you for being so friendly. After learning they were going to be looking to work with more bloggers I've kept my eye out for this amazing opportunity... you see they're looking to recruit 5 bloggers to work with in 2015 and as a family we really want to be chosen! I am craving a family holiday, I want to start making those ever lasting memories with my children. Mark Warner have asked bloggers to enter by creating a blog post explaining their perfect family holiday, so yep you guess it...I'm going to use this blog post to tell you about our perfect family holiday!
Firstly incase you've never read my blog then this is us...

I'm Mary-Kate, a stay at home mum of two little people who you can see below; Oliver age 5 and Isabelle 8 months. Michael is my better half, he's very lovely and I feel incredibly lucky to have him by my side. He's a self employed landscape gardener, who works 6 days a week to provide for our little family. We haven't had an evening out together in the best part of a year now.

Oliver is our little boy, he is '5 years big' already. He loves school, actually Oliver cried on Friday because he had to go to the hospital for a hearing test and 'didn't get to do any learning all day' *throws hands out to show how terrible this really is*. He loves birdwatching and spiderman, dinosaurs and the solar system. He's at that age where he starts asking all sorts of questions and insults people without meaning to... "nanny you're old so you're going to heaven soon" oh and she was poorly at the time so, that made her feel great! He's a handful but has the kindest soul, just like most children has 1000 questions and sometimes I just don't know how to answer them. *google it*

This is the baby of the family, Isabelle. Shes a very smiley, cheeky baby. She's got lots of food allergies so weaning her is very hard. Her favourite thing to do is to smash down whatever Oliver's just built with his blocks and then laugh when she gets told off. The Christmas tree is her favourite toy and we've had to keep the bottom of the tree a little empty! It feels like yesterday I had her, yet now shes crawling around trying to stand up! She's very teeny at 16lb 11oz even though she was born 8lb 6oz so we're getting lots of use out of her clothes.
So that's us! 

It's no secret that I am desperate to go on our very first family holiday, we have only taken Oliver to a few places in the UK before Isabelle was born so he can go to the seaside but we've never taken him abroad and obviously like any other little boy he is desperate to get on an aeroplane! I will confess now that other than Wales, I've only ever been to Ireland and France. Michael took me to Paris for a few days which was lovely, Oliver hasn't forgiven us yet though as he wanted to go too.

Since having Isabelle, 8 almost 9 months ago (wow that's gone quickly) we haven't had a full night sleep so we are walking around in a daze most of the time, Michael is working full time and we've got a very lively Oliver who is 5 years old, started to wake up every night to tell me 'he isn't tired', 'wants to play' or 'scared of the dark'... oh and you can gaurantee that he's going to wake the baby when he gets up as he has to walk past her door to get to ours. I've given up dairy to continue to breastfeed Isabelle who has cows milk protein allergy so I don't even have a massive galaxy bar to get me through these sleepless nights! Christmas chocolates everywhere lately just aren't making things easier and I don't think Michael realises that those chocolate - no, correction, triple chocolate muffins he brought earlier are torture for me!

As a child, Michael spent summers at his late Grandma's villa in Menorca. Which he loved, learning new things and being able to go for a swim whenever he wanted, going on boats. Being in  a different country for a long period of time and learning about their way of life is something he really enjoyed. He's mentioned food a few times too!

As a child, I spent holidays in North Wales with my family. A place called Llandudno, which we've actually taken Oliver to and he loved it. We loved going to the seaside, on the pier and for walks around the Great Orme - my doll even got Christened in the Church on the top of the Great Orme, by my brother James. Ahh I loved that doll and it's poor legs had to be reattached! they have a tram to take you up the Orme if you don't want to walk, which as a child I was amazed by obviously and half way up there's a copper mine so we used to get off to go in there and learn things. I loved the donkey rides on the beach, I still to this day remember wearing my little red jumper begging my dad to stay right next to me incase I fell off. I was a daddy's girl, I always will be. I remember sitting watching punch and judy like it was the best thing ever! Oliver watched the exactly the same one, run by the same people when we returned which was lovely.

I've told you about our family holidays as children because I'd like to put our childhood holidays together to create our perfect one, I want to get my two out of the UK like Michael did, although I believe it doesn't matter where you go as long as you go and make memories. But I'd quite like to get me out of the UK too, out of my 'comfort zone' and on an adventure. A little bit of me wants to do some lazing on a beach and then build sandcastles and let Oliver & Isabelle cover my feet in sand, we want to be able to take Oliver exploring, encourage his learning - his favourite thing to do is bird watching and he's actually pretty good at it considering he's only 5. He likes to learn about different animals and Michael would like to learn about the place we go, it's history and see some of it's attractions as well as obviously experience their food. Not forgetting Isabelle, she loves everything new at the moment and gets ever so excited! As long as we take enough snacks for her I'm sure she'll be very happy wherever she goes. She's obviously going to be a tricky one food wise which also already worries me - shes got cows milk protein allergy, shes on a wheat, egg, potatoe, broccoli, peaches and mango free diet due to intolerances! But I'm sure with a trusted company it will all be fine. /a doctors note to take my own food for her :)

We would love to start our family holidays with Mark Warner because they're a company you can really trust, I feel nervous about taking our little family abroad... I feel nervous about myself going abroad, so to be able to feel safe is very important to our family. I am a strong believer in making memories - hints the name 'mummy memories', my dad sadly passed away when I was 17 so my last family holiday was to Ireland in 2005 and I'm so glad we got to have that holiday with him, I want my children to have memories of holidays with their parents that will inspire holidays with their own family.

I want a magical holiday of a lifetime from Mark Warner, to let Oliver stay up later after days of new adventures and to actually get to use that suncream for once! To come home with laughter lines on our face, Michael is funnier on holiday! To have 100's of new photos reminding us just how lucky we are to have our happy little family.

So this is it, our entry to be a #MarkWarnerMum a chance to be part of an amazing team for 2015 and share it all with you here on my blog.

Keeping our fingers crossed Mark Warner!

Mary-Kate, x