What are your treasured moments of family chaos? Tell Bassetts Vitamins for a chance to win a £300 John Lewis voucher! NOW CLOSED

[RebeccaEMumsnet]

Family life can often be chaotic at times, but often chaos can create the best family memories. Bassetts Vitamins would love to know your stories of when things didn’t quite go to plan, that you can look back on and laugh at.

Here’s what Bassetts Vitamins have to say: “At Bassetts Vitamins we know that family life is colourful and rarely straightforward. However, whilst family days out are a great opportunity to enjoy precious and active time together, families need to be ready and set to go, to deal with whatever challenges the day may bring. Our intention is to support families through the ups and downs of family life.”

So, tell us about a moment of chaos in your family which (eventually) made a funny story. Have camping trips been cut short by a tent collapsing in the middle of the night? Or an attempt to present yourself as a perfectly normal family went horribly wrong.

Whatever your treasured family chaos, Bassetts Vitamins would love to hear it, so post your story below.

All those who share a story below will be entered into a prize draw where one MNer will win a £300 John Lewis voucher.

Thanks and good luck

MNHQ

T&Cs Apply

Hotel getting the booking wrong and being in a standard double room instead of family, and learning that the youngest doesn't lie still when asleep! The rest of us were wide awake all night and black and blue the next day!

DS has always taken Christmas very seriously and when he was four he was really, really excited about Christmas. We got him and DD to bed at a reasonable time but DS emerged from his room at 10.30 pm hysterical that Father Christmas had not been. It took me until 2.00 am to get him back to sleep. He got up before 6.00 am overjoyed that Father Christmas had now managed to deliver his presents, DD (then 2) woke too with all the excitement and Christmas Day began. By 10.30 am we were all back in bed asleep! Luckily we have a tradition of having our full Christmas meal on Christmas Eve so the turkey was already cooked. After a couple of hours sleep we all had a wonderful Christmas Day.

My family day out in Thorpe Park last weekend with my 3 year old daughter. She was so scared looking at all those rollercoasters that she cried non stop asking us to take her back home.

5 yo DS is intently staring at water draining from tub, where does it go? Down into the drain I told him, matter over. You would think.
2 days later I am cooking downstairs, he says he shall wash his hands and get ready for dinner. Goes up to the Loo, comes down. Nothing fishy. Cold night, hot cooking, steamy kitchen and I feel water drop on my head and I though ah condensation, open kitchen door and feel more drops. Run up. He has plugged in the sink and the tub. Left both taps on on both places, water overflow now flooding the bathroom and running downstairs. I would have laughed but we had only 2 weeks back finished a major refurb. Towels and bedsheets to the ready. DS made to sit and watch all the walls leaking water while I cleaned . He did howl out of panic at the sight of water flooding the floors.
Now we just casually ask if he is being sensible each time he is upstairs by himself and are saving for a civil engineering course later in life

In a little continental style shoe shop with DD, who was about 3. I got chatting to a lovely grandmother, as we browsed the sale rack, while DD sat on the square seating in the centre of the shop. Unfortunately, a large cake box belonging to said grandmother, containing a beautiful birthday cake for her 6 year old granddaughter was in the spot that DD wanted to move to... so she swept it off with her outstretched arm.

Lovely grandmother continued to be lovely as I apologised profusely and refused my offer of another cake (which couldn't realistically have happened as the party was less than two hours away...), but the disappointment was evident on her face.

I have many more DD related chaos tales...

We went on a camping holiday to Cornwall with our two small children and faithful hound. Trying to be super organised we set off at 4 am to beat the traffic and so that the kids might nod off again. 4 hours later on the motorway, a general conversation started about what snacks we had in the car and this turned into asking who had packed what stuff. Horrible realisation that neither of us had packed the big pole for our bell tent. We stopped on the hard shoulder to check, pulling out every single bag to check! Stuff everywhere, and no pole. Fast forward 4 hours to us pulling up outside our house again, me getting out and grabbing pole from garage, getting back in car (engine still running) and setting off again. We eventually arrived after a total drive time of 15 hours! It was a wonderful campsite, idyllic weather and a fabulous family holiday from that point on. We now always use a checklist when packing!

We went to a great local safari park - whilst in the LION enclosure surrounded by huge hungry lions my 5 year old declares he needs a wee and he needs it now. So with cars bumper to bumper and no way out, dad ( who also needed a wee but luckily has more control ;) downed his drink and we made a make shift toilet in the car in the middle of a lion enclosure. We then safari'd with a bottle full of wee in the baking sun - good fun!

I took my DD3 to a play park. It had a new water feature installed that I wasn't aware of. I remember looking for her and finding her in a pool. At the angle I was looking at, I could see she had responsibly rolled her trousers up to the knee so as not to get them wet.
What a good girl I thought. Until I got closer and realised she still had her socks and leather shoes on!

The time on holiday when my DS2 when he turned the 'maid's' tap on in the kitchen. It was a villa in Portugal and they have a tap about a foot from the floor for filling buckets.
We were just going out and called to him to get in the car.
6 hours later we returned. We noticed water flowing under the doors . The kitchen floor was under water, as was the dining room. Luckily the rest of the villa was on a higher level.
He was very mischievous that holiday. He managed to find a marker pen and draw on the furniture :(
He also threw the contents of the fruit bowel into the swimming pool. Nothing we couldn't sort out with a net and insurance!

A family party when children felt sick and the only option was a handbag. Joy .

Went to the shops with my kids and they all ran to the toys aisle and started playing with the toys and making such noise

After my first weekend away from DD at 6m old, I came home, had a bath with her and she did a massive poo. Shouted for DH who removed her and she looked like the happiest person on earth while I showered poo of me...

Every morning trying to get ready and fighting for the bathroom - not at the time but over mid morning coffee

The day they decided to empty all of their toys and clothes all over the floor in their bedroom, it was an absolute mess and took ages to tidy up.

Getting ready for a gite holiday in France, packing everything (including the kids) into the car, and always remembering to put the potty on the top!

After the birth of my son we were determined that he wouldn't stop us from doing what we wanted. My husband booked a w/e in Paris when my son was 10 weeks old. Big mistake. My son cried the whole w/e. When we stopped for a coffee in FRENCH cafes one of us sat and drank while the other paced up and down outside trying to keeping him from screaming the house down.
We still didn't learn outer lesson bias we booked a holiday to GREECE. That ended in disaster with us flying home a week early.

There are so many id struggle to choose just one ! i have a very large family so any get together is chaos !

Camping in north Devon on the top of a hill the wind was so strong it ripped our awning away from the caravan, kids were so scared they sleeper under their became! Happy days.

The day I provided my kids with a huge selection of water bombs and they discovered the joy of hurling them out of windows, off the climging frame and at each other and me. It was a lovely summer's day.

When we got stuck in a traffic journey and arguing, we started to play games, had a laugh and changed our plans and went to a country pub and walk instead and had a lovely time

The holiday to Skegness that we have just got back from!. We didn't book the caravan we thought we had and there wasn't enough beds so just had to make-do by top n' tailing!. It wasn't the most comfortable of holidays but the kids though it was great and we had a lovely time.

Im not sure I could pin point a specific one. With a hugh and forever growing family, every get together is caotic.
Although once me the OH our 2LOs and my sister her OH and her 4 'Darlings' went to a caravan for a little weekend break. As it was only made for 8 and we squeezed in the extra too it was seriously cramped. We got the caravan right near the train tracks, which meant the night time ones shook the whole place. No one slept the whole weekend. It poured of rain the whole time so 90 percent of the stay we were in the dingy thing! The other 10% we were all running for air after my then 4yo done the biggest smelliest poo that we couldnt flush. We burnt the pizzas my niece folded up in the sofa bed (funny now but at the time she totally disappeared and the panic was real) and my two lovely nephews acted like they'd gone to a WWE convention. So basically it was a disaster from the get go.

While coming back from dh's home country on my own with dd (18 months old at the time), she became sick on the way to the airport...

She vomited all over herself so I changed her on the side of the road in the dark, (but failed to notice she had done a poo, important detail for later, and also failed to notice that she vomited all on my side...)

While queueing to get on the plane, I finally noticed the poo (that was actually a poonami) and my vomit stained top (but by now I had no spare clothes for me as it was all in the hold).

I went to change her nappy before take off only to realise that her clothes were ruined and more importantly I had left the wipes in the car after cleaning up her vomit...

I cleaned her as well as I could, and used the last spare clothes I had for her, the first flight was fine, I bought some wipes while we were waiting for our connection flight (happy times).

Then again she pooed everywhere while I was at the gate but with time to kill I went to change her nappy, she managed to get her fingers stuck in the lift's door and I couldn't remove them (I was panicking and I think the 2 Chinese ladies screaming oh my god! Oh my god! Next to me didn't help). A local man came to the rescue and managed to free dd.

We board the plane to london (6hrs flight) and that's when it all went even more wrong, dd had diarrhoea about 7 times, I ran out of nappies (thank god for the stewardess who had some spares) and also ran out of clothes,

We arrived in london with dd wrapped in an airplane blanket, me covered in vomit exhausted but happy to be home,

We figured a year later that this was caused by dd drinking the bath water while at my father in law, but the water over there is not safe to drink... She never did it again after that!

We were having a lovely meal out and a trip to the pantomime. My DD says she felt a bit funny and proceeded to be sick. My instinct was to catch it in my hands. (As my hubby sat there oblivious!)

family chaos ensues every evening when we have dinner, especially having out two uni kids back for the summer. and our two younger children. There is laughter, grumbles, chatter and lovely just being together.