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

locked in the loo!

Getting completely stuck on the a34 due to a lorry fire with a newborn and 3 year old. We were so stressed but the kids were great and we sang songs and made the best of it. Plus we stopped at a diner at about 9 for dinner, 3 year old loved being out so late but I think the other diners thought it a but strange!

Literally all day every day is chaos! I wouldn't have it any other way!

Crab fishing in Padstow. A 5 year old, a 2 year old, a sheer drop from the harbour wall and no railings. Hell at the time trying to keep both kids safe and back from the edge - looking back though we managed it and all had a whale of a time!

We currently live in a 2 up 2 down small house with 2 children under 4. Every day is chaos and sometimes it feels like the walls are closing in. We are moving in few weeks and i am looking forward to having a bit more space but I am sure it will get filled with lego and other colourful plastic.

Making Eton mess for the first time with my ds who managed to create a snowstorm in the kitchen every time he tried to break one of the meringues; somehow he managed to poke his thumbs in so hard that each one just seemed to explode...

Teaching the same ds to make a marinade by shaking the ingredients - without the lid screwed on properly. Something got marinaded that day, but it wasn't the salmon...

Doing as much of the extension work as possible to save money on builders.

Mixing concrete, pouring it for the foundations.

With hindsight, the toddler and the cat would have been better elsewhere...

Everyday...every bloody day.

rushing to Tesco for last minute stuff for dd birthday party later that day, and ds throwing up all over me, himself, sister, stuff in trolley and aisle. I just sort of stood there and froze. Staff rushed over, and were amazing.

Everyday is chaos. And has been since the chaotic birth in our front room

A family trip to the park which was cut short when a seagull pooped on my partners head less than 5 minutes of arriving.

The school run when DC1 was in Reception and I had a newborn baby (DC2). Lots of stops midway in local park (in late autumn/early winter) to breastfeed and/or staying on at school (lovely teacher and classroom assistant) at pick-up time to do the same.

'Treasured family chaos' - I love it!

For me, it's the half hour before bedtime when Daddy gets home and we're all together. Tonight, we were rolling the baby around in a pop-up laundry basket while his big brother was laughing hysterically. It sounds like nothing, but small moments like that are what I love.

Christmas when there were presents and wrapping paper everywhere and we were eating Christmas dinner, only to notice the cat had not only completely unwrapped some presents but was peeling the foil off a chocolate Santa! She doesn't like chocolate but she loves foil. The owner of the Santa was less impressed. This was after many incidents of Christmas tree climbing by both cats!

We had had a very peaceful flight home from Greece with 18 mth ds1, we were even complimented on what a good boy he was. I had noticed he seemed to be quite 'windy' and was a little surprised he'd not had a dirty nappy. We got safely through security, collected our bags, found our car, loaded the boot and then ds1 started the telltale red faced squirming...a pooh was on its way. No problem, we had 2 more nappies left and a few wipes.We changed his nappy on the backseat of the car, thinking we'd be on our way home soon. However, as soon as he was all clean and dungarees fastened, the squirming started again, cue another nappy change, and another... in the end he was standing up 'free poohing' onto a travel rug in Gatwick car park and we took him home wrapped in a tshirt instead of a nappy.

My 6-year-old DS1 has a game on his tablet where he has to take care of a virtual cat called Tom. So he has to put it to bed when it's tired, feed him when he's hungry etc. His tablet was on charge in the kitchen when I was cooking dinner and I noticed this Tom needed a wee, so I shouted through to my son in the living room "you need to take your cat to the toilet" he replied "ok".... A few minutes passed and he hadn't come in, so I poked my round the door and neither he, nor my 2-year-old DS2 were anywhere to be seen. Found them in the bathroom; DS1 had stripped off DS2's trousers and nappy, put the toddler seat on the toilet and had DS2 in a bear hug, trying to physically lift him on to the toilet!

I was like "I meant your cat on your tablet...?"
He replied "oh, I thought you were calling DS2 a cat?!..."

I just love how he unquestioningly decided to help his little brother have a wee, didn't stop and think "this really isn't my job". Made me laugh out loud to see them both conspiring to get him up on the toilet, but was also so sweet.

going caravanning presented many chaotic moments, the fight about who got which daily chore and trying to get everything set up and then put away again. It was chaotic but I look back at it with fond memories, it was organised chaos that's for sure!

Have loads of treasured family holidays memories.

The one that makes us laugh is our first holiday to south of France had a lovely holiday but on the drive back to the ferry a very tired Son starts saying look at the shoes going down the road, look at the clothes. We thought maybe he was asleep. Was not till a bit further down the road we realised the top box on the car had come undone and it was our shoes and clothes and inflatables going down the road. Cue stopping the car and walking down the highway to go collect the items we could. Good job it was about 6am and the roads were empty.

When my autistic niece hadn't mastered getting her echolalia under control and she'd randomly shout things out. Notably, in the middle of a civilsed family dinner party, the conversation lulled and she shouted at the top of her lungs: "Buuuuuuuuuster, where arrrrreeeeeeeee youuuuu?"

Getting stranded at the end of a day out due to a signal failure on the train line. Had to wait ages for a replacement bus. Made friends with various older women in the queue, organised the bus driver, saw some interesting countryside and got home very late!

The first day getting two children ready for nursery instead of just the one was farcical. It was a miracle they both didn't have to go in the PJs!

the day i proudly told any parent who would listen plus the house parents that my dds had packed their own trunks for school, and had carefully checked of the uniform lists etc...opened dd1 trunk to find all her one direction posters and cds, a bright pink tutu and 17 teddies and opened dd2 trunk to find her wetsuit, flippers, three hand towels, an unwashed tshirt and our new ( very much alive) puppy ...thank goodness trip to school had only been half hr in car and puppy was ok...i had to laugh at my own stupidity...and go home and pack everything they had carefully hidden in the wardrobes and return to school with it...

When our DS was 10 weeks old we attended a wedding. It was a friend of my husbands who he's known since college. I put our son in a gorgeous little suit and he looked so dapper. We took our seats for the ceremony which was open to close friends and family only and literally 30 seconds before the bride made her grand entrance I smelt that tell tale aroma that meant I needed to make a quick exit to the baby change area.

When I got to the baby change I was faced with the worst poonami we'd had so far - it was literally EVERYWHERE! It had gone all up his back, round his front and down all his legs. I stripped him off and then realised the only other clothes I had with us was the sleepsuit we had bought with the intention of putting on him before we drove home so we could transfer him more easily to bed when we got there. That was a rookie mistake being new parents and having not really gone too far with him before.

I had no option but to put the sleepsuit on him as I had nothing else. Once the ceremony ended we then went on to the reception where we found out that as it was a chinese wedding tradition states that everyone is invited to the reception - there were 500 people all of whom kept saying to me repeatedly all day "oh he's so lovely he looks so cute in his pyjamas"

I really wanted to reply with "well he wasn't wearing his pyjamas until he decided to projectile poo all over his smart clothes" but managed to refrain.

It was a nightmare at the time but we can laugh about it now.

Story not suitable for emetephobes...

We went to Blackpool over Valentine's weekend this year with our daughter. Everything was going great; it was a lovely weekend away... until she threw up in Harry Ramsdens on Blackpool sea front. Over us, over our dinner, everything. Worst thing was she even got the couple between us - they must have been on a "last Valentine's date before birth" as the lady was very heavily pregnant and the poor things just ended up with toddler sick all over the backs of their coats.

We were absolutely mortified and covered in sick. We paid for our meal and paid for the meal of the couple she'd thrown up on, and ended up walking back to our hotel down Blackpool sea front, surrounded by hen and stag parties, the three of us just in puke-covered clothes, getting stared at by everyone who walked past and all three of us looking traumatised. It was horrendous at the time, complete chaos, but now it's such a funny memory!

When our dog ran off with my Dad's pants on the beach. Dog took them into the sea and they floated off then sank. We spent ages looking for them then they washed up hours later. Never seen DS laugh so much.