When our third was born, the other two were just starting school or about to start the following year. There was no way we were going to be able to afford foreign holidays at any point in the year and in any case we had not been abroad ourselves since we were carefree students who could kip down in places we couldn't have taken three small children to. Even holidays in this country were impossible to consider.
Our answer came when someone we knew said they were selling their caravan (A Sprite Major) We bought it and had many years of touring with it. We feared that small children wouldn't enjoy touring, but they loved moving to different places every few days.
At night there was no problem sleeping in unfamiliar beds. They each had their place and their own tiny cupboard for their books and toys (baby slept in a carrycot until his head and feet were pressing obvously on the fabric at top and bottom and he graduated to being tucked in beside his sisters) If we didn't feel like go out, we sat and read, the girls drew, read, or played with their toys and baby played on the floor. When that palled, we put on our coats and went exploring.
We saw a lot of our own country, in all weathers (steaming heat and midges in Western Argyll, torrential rain on Skye, winds on the East coast that made us wish we could tie the van down, sun and sand at Yellowcraigs, fog at Whitby.) We investigated forest walks and paddled in burns, we walked where Roman soldiers with cold feet sent messages home asking for a friend to send them warm socks and where smugglers brought contraband ashore on moonless nights and ponies with cloths tied round their hooves carried it past the excise men.
Why do so many people feel that if they haven't flown to somewhere with a label "Holiday Destination" they have somehow been cheated of a holiday?