Constantly finding fun things to do with your kids is quite a feat. Especially when you have been busy working all week and then when it comes to the weekend (and all you want to do is sleep), you are met with these little people who seem to have endless amounts of energy.
Now of course, if you have bundles of cash then you can take them to indoor/outdoor play centres and you can chill out with a coffee and a magazine whilst they burn off their excess energy playing.
But what if you are on a budget?
Then you have to find fun things to do that won't cost lots of money every week.
We don't live too far away from the coast, but going to the seaside isn't always the best option for a low cost day out with the kids and for some (who live nowhere near a coastline), it isn't an option at all. I'm not sure about other countries but in the Netherlands, we are fortunate to have quite a few lakes around and most of these have beaches of their own.
This weekend we went to the nearby lake as it was sunny and warm enough to be comfortable lakeside. We took one of our dogs with us as they have a dedicated dog beach there.
My dogs are not the biggest fans of the water, but one of them (Darwin) is becoming more accustomed to it over time. There were other dogs to play with so he was happy, and the kids enjoyed paddling in the water whilst playing with the dogs.
After we'd spent enough time on the dog beach, we continued on to the normal beach on the other side of the lake. The girls hurried off to build sand castles and swim in the shallow water there.
They had a lovely time!
We rounded off the day with ice creams and were thoroughly exhausted by the time we got home.
It is days like this that I enjoy the most. When you go somewhere and have a nice fun day out without the hassle of travelling too far, being surrounded by hoards of people or spending loads of money.