It’s been a little while since I last shared any of our family adventures here, which doesn’t mean there haven’t been any over the past few weeks. Our baby-summer-holiday break is now officially over, and of course I’ll be keeping you up to date with the highlights of our Second Life summer in the usual way. Or rather, catching up on a few stories I still owe you.

Baby Henry has been at the centre of our virtual life these past weeks. He is an absolutely adorable little boy who is already almost three months old — can you believe it? He was born on June 21, 2026, and has turned our world upside down all over again, even though you’d think our two girls had already prepared us fairly well for a certain amount of chaos in the house. Henry is a cheerful little fellow. His particular baby attitude has put a few of our dearly loved habits up for internal review and promptly voted them out — sleeping through the night, for example. But on the whole, he is a very agreeable and sociable little gentleman. Which is how the subject of a family holiday came up, and we decided it was time to go and explore Second Life’s campgrounds.

That turned out to be less straightforward than expected. Finding one that wasn’t on Adult land — obviously not an option with children — and wasn’t hopelessly booked up proved surprisingly difficult. Suddenly, I found a region called Serene Woods 2026. I took my time exploring it and even met the owner Gadget McLOVIN, who told me that while he doesn’t generally rent out camping spots, he would be happy for us to spend our family holiday there.

There was just one catch: no rezzing. That could have been a deal-breaker. Could have been, had I been anybody other than me. The region was simply far too beautiful to let a minor detail like that stop me. So I made wearable sleeping bags for all of us, and our camping holiday was officially on.

Anyone who knows me also knows there was absolutely no chance I would stop at sleeping bags — naturally coordinated with each girl’s favourite colour and Henry’s predicted future favourite colour. Obviously, we needed backpacks too, which fortunately delayed our departure only slightly. Once everything had been decorated with foxes, raccoons, cats and koalas, everyone’s respective cuddly toys had been packed, and the provisions were prepared and waiting in the cooler, it was finally time to load the car.

Mike had already bought a bigger car before Henry was born and had apparently decided to express the more egocentric part of his otherwise delightful personality through his choice of colour. So he pulled our bright yellow family car up in front of the garage — and the great packing extravaganza began.

It was both funny and rather interesting to see how differently everyone in the family reacted to the excitement of going away. Villie and I were practically bouncing. She was excited because this was the first trip she was really old enough to consciously look forward to; I was excited because, as Mrs. Perfect Mommy, I naturally had to make sure I had thought of absolutely everything.

My chilled Hubby remained completely calm and simply loaded everything into the car, including us. Liv has very clearly inherited his laid-back approach to life. At some point she appeared in front of me and held out her lollipop, apparently having noticed the dangerous decline in her mother’s blood sugar and deciding to intervene. And Henry? There isn’t much to say about Henry. The entire packing circus happened to fall neatly into his morning nap window, so he spent it fed, knocked out and fast asleep in his car seat.

Somehow, eventually, everything — and everyone — fit.
Serene Woods, here we come.