As we say farewell to the summer, we had to share this uplifting letter:

As a teacher, as the summer holidays begin I’m illed with excitement at the prospect of quality time with my two boys, but also daunted by entertaining them for six weeks (and aording it!).

While we’re lucky we’ve managed a short holiday to the UK seaside, not all days out can be booked with theme-park tickets and meals out. We hope to teach them to ind happiness in small moments – summer walks with picnics, movie nights and maybe the odd lie-in. What has delighted me is how content they’ve been doing the ‘simpler stu’ – and part of it is thanks to you. They suggested we start a family meal challenge, where we take it in turns to choose a new meal on the planner. We make an event of digging out old magazines (we’ve subscribed for years). At the end of the week, we vote for the meal we liked best, which will make it into the family recipe book. This has cost me no extra than a few tweaks to my weekly shopping order, and has brought us many hours of shared time together.