One of the main reasons we love to visit Edinburgh is that it is the perfect location to spend time with my family.  I’m so lucky to have two of my grandparents and so take every opportunity for the children to spend time with their great-grandparents!  My parents came up for a few days so we had extra family fun!

We kept a day free to spend time with my parents – and they suggested a trip over to nearby Falkirk which has remodelled itself from a pretty bland, industrial town into a fabulous destination for families.  We started the day at the incredible Helix – a new urban greenspace featuring a performance area, trails, watersports and more. But the children weren’t interested in the lake, walks and bike rides when they spotted this:

The Helix is home to one of the biggest and best adventure playgrounds I’ve seen – Alex and Sophie were so excited to try everything and immediately wanted to go on the tallest slide there.  It was so well constructed, that even Sophie could easily climb up to the top safely.  But just in case she got into trouble, her big brother stayed with her and helped her at the top.  It was lovely listening to him from the bottom of the slide help her – “Don’t worry Sophie, it’s going to be fast and scary, but if you hold on to me, you’ll be okay”.  And sure enough, they whizzed down together, Sophie clinging on to her big brother, and both of them squealing with you!

They went up and down the various slides together – here’s Grandpa calling them down!

Alex loved the massive net climbing frame, super proud of himself for being able to get right across it on his own:

And here’s Sophie sliding and bouncing!

Our monkeys had so much fun, and we all had fun watching the – it was hard to drag them away.

That is, it was hard to drag them away, until they spotted the excellent splashpark!  It wasn’t that warm, but my pair immediately stripped off and got soaked!

They spent ages waiting at the various spouts to be sprayed with water!

They just loved getting sprayed in the face!

Eventually they started feeling cold, so we headed off to the Falkirk Wheel to get wet all over again!  Sophie had free reign of the big paddling pool, entirely ignoring the enormous canal wheel behind her in favour of more splashing.

She didn’t even mind falling flat on her bottom in the water!

Meanwhile, Alex was enjoying getting soaked by his Grandpa at the helm of a water cannon while he pottered around in the fabulous mini pedalos!

The little boats were perfect for Alex’s age and he confidently travelled around the little lake trying to get as wet as possible!

We spent the last part of our visit clambering all over the water play area, even learning about engineering principles with an archimedes screw!

Falkirk was a brilliant place to spend an entire day with the family – and it was such a pleasure for the children to spend that day with their Grandparents.  I think they all loved every minute!

As well as our special day out, we made a few trips to my Grandparents house to catch up with them.  As on previous visits, Alex immediately hit their garden with the ageing collection of matchbox cars that used to entertain my little brother when he was small!  Alex and Sophie set to work racing them down the path in the garden.

They were joined by my Auntie Margaret who gave them a run for their money!

But the real reason we were there was to spend time with my grandparents.  Here’s Alex and Sophie with their Great Grandparents!

And enjoying a wonderful cuddle with their Great Grandpa!  So special 🙂

Of course, when we had the camera out, we posed for lots of pictures – so here’s family Agar!

And here’s the full gang – my grandparents, their two daughters and my little family.  I’m sad that we live so far away it’s hard to get together, but enjoy it so much when we do.  And I’m so happy that Alex and Sophie are making memories with their Scottish family.  Alex is already asking to go back to race cars with his Great Grandpa!  Here’s to 2016!