To ask how you use your holidays

[dontdance]

Sorry posting for traffic. DH and I both work in areas where we need to book time off well in advance. I have 30 days and DH has 25. This is our first year of being restricted to term time. We were thinking of:

5 days each at Christmas (so ten Fay's off with bank hols)
4 days at Easter (so ten days including the bank holiday)
2 weeks in July
4 days (aligned to the bank holiday so a week) at the end of August.

This gives DH and me 2 days each in terms of extra days off in an emergency (but both our jobs are quite good at letting us make up time) and me an extra week, which I was planning to take in a half term (or to take a couple of days off each half term).

How do you spread your holidays ? Do you take half terms off ?

I always do 4 days easter, 4 days spring bank holiday, 9 days last 2 weeks of August. Leaves 8 days. Usually take Oct half term and a day or 2 for Xmas.

A lot of it depends on your holiday childcare arrangements tbh. We were totally dependant on holiday club which tended not to cover Christmas, half terms and inset days - but was great in the summer. So we'd take all of the christmas holiday off between us (and have a day off for nativity play etc as two half days), the half terms in some combination, a week off in the summer together plus the few extra days not covered by holiday club, and as we could roll over a week of holiday we did that if possible to have spare in case of illness.

All on school holidays. DH and I try and have a week off together at some point in the year, but we are e turkey reliant on patchy childcare. Next year will be interesting when the dc will be at different schools with different inset days. DS is a bit old for the holiday club at school (his old school) but also too young to leave all day.