I sometimes feel like a ‘no’ mommy. No, you can’t have another biscuit. No, you can’t watch Frozen again. No, you can’t play in the garden at 6am.

At 9am on Sunday morning when Harrison asked if we could go to the seaside, I automatically opened my mouth to say no. I had a tonne of work to get on with and Graham was going to crack on with the garden. Then I stopped and thought ‘sod it’. The garden could wait. Work could wait. Harrison isn’t going to be a 4-year-old much longer. So I said ‘yes’.

Going to the seaside is no easy feat for us. Going to the park is bad enough, packing the three kids and all the usual nappies, wipes, milk, dummies, and spare clothes takes long enough, but going to the beach for the day is a whole different level. Especially when said beach is at least 2.5 hours away.

It ended up taking us almost four hours to get there, thanks to losing signal on my phone and not realising until we were 40 miles off track. Still, the Welsh mountains and countryside is so beautiful that it didn’t really matter. We sang along to whatever station we could pick up on the radio, and looked out for sheep.

When we got there, we only had time for an hour or so on the beach. The sea was too far out to go for a paddle, but we found a big puddle on the sand, which Harrison and Alex enjoyed jumping in and splashing in. Benjamin wasn’t quite so keen on the feel of damp sand under his feet but loved walking across it with his trainers on, picking up all sorts of interesting things and laughing at the seagulls.

We had a quick walk down to look at the fishing boats before going to have some chips on the seafront. We might have only managed a couple of hours at the seaside, but we made memories to treasure for a long time. Ignoring the to-do list and saying yes sometimes really is worth it.