Half term girls day

Well today Id planned for me and my little girl to have a 'Girls' Day out without Thomas or Daddy!
We went swimming at the local pool in the morning where it only costs £4 for us both to go and spent the morning whizzing down the flume together and practicing her swimming.
Had a really great time and I think we were both worn out by the end of it all. We're really lucky that our council pool has such nice facilities too as they have slides and floats for the little ones and a flume and all good value + free parking as its the council pool.
I thought we might have the inevitable tantrums begin when it was time to leave so I made sure to give Alice her 10 minute, 5 minute and 2 minute warnings and to explain that we would go down the flume for the last time before getting out. I never used to do this till I saw it on Super Nanny where Jo Frost says if you were out for the night with your husband and he just suddenly told you you were leaving no time to say goodbye or drink up you'd be pretty annoyed at best so same goes for kids however small, and while it doesn't always prevent a tantrum it certainly seems to help!!

After swimming we were going for a special girls lunch, which made Alice very exited. What she didn't realise was that the truly special part was that we were going to cafe rouge to use up some clubcard vouchers there so apart from my small wine we each had a 3 course lunch entirely free.
I dont think many people realise how much more they could get for their clubcard points if you swap them for vouchers, my Cafe Rouge ones were worth 4 times the points, so our £20 lunch cost £5 in points, brilliant!!
Was really lovely to spend sometime just the two of us as Alice goes to play school most morning now and although its great to only have one of them on my hands I often feel like I'm missing out on time with my little girl.
I was so pleased with the service they knew we would be paying with vouchers but still treated us wonderfully, Alice had a lovely meal and a giant ice-cream sundae (using the kids menu which was allowed with the vouchers which was great) and was given a wonderful activity pack to keep her happy between courses with lots of French pictures/puzzles/counting etc and even some nice stickers. I attempted to remember some of my old school French to encourage her and we had a really great time filling this in(then showing off our success to Daddy when we got home!)
Alice was also bought a helium balloon which she proudly clung on to all afternoon till it finally popped!

Really really lovely day :-)
Hope your all enjoying half term too and finding ways to keep your little ones busy.