Weeks of Sept 6th and 13th... Settling Into Mt. Anville and Our Next Adventure

Hello everyone.  It's Russ here doing a blog post finally (although I will take some credit for proofreading/editorial duties on her posts)...  I can't believe with how busy Lyns has been being a great wife, Mom and employee, that she found the time to keep up on this blog like she has.  It will be great to have this adventure documented to look back on in 10, 20, 30 years.  Thanks Lyns and Mom!!!  Also, thanks to everyone who has mentioned reading the blog and enjoying the updates from us.  That definitely makes spending the time putting the posts together even more worthwhile!  We will be looking forward to catching up more with everyone during our return trip to the US for the holidays!

These weeks in mid September were not extraordinarily exciting, but productive.  The time was perfect for continuing to explore the neighborhood and city of Dublin and plan for our upcoming trips to Belgium and Holland and our return trip to the States in December.  We continued getting settled into out apartment and into our school (girls), work(Lyns), and domestic engineering/househusband/chauffeur (Russ)  routines.  Getting a TV and a TV license (yes, a 160 Euro TV licence), a drivers license, home/property insurance and an Ikea run for the last of the furniture were some of the things we continued to work on.  We now have the equivalent of two full beds and a sofa for anyone interested in visiting or staying with us!  It's a small apartment, but the layout is pretty efficient and we think we have utilized the space well.  Just let us know if anyone is looking for an Irish getaway and we'd be happy to put you up for a stay!

Putting IKEA furniture together.  Love that the girls want to help me out!  What good helpers.

For the girls, they are quickly acclimating to their new environment and making friends.  Mondays are always the toughest, but as the week grinds on, they continue to get better and better with the school routine.  One of the little things we did for them was to bring a surprise snack/treat bag at the end of the day of school on a few days during the first couple weeks.  This quickly went from a spontaneous surprise treat to an expectation for each pick up.  Obviously that expectation needed some adjustment, much like the two month summer holiday...  even though they didn't continue to get a treat EVERY DAY, they are just fine wouldn't you know!

Surprise treat bags that they looked forward to during the first couple weeks of school.

They are meeting new friends and starting to really get interested in the schoolwork and the extracurriculars. We have been talking about having play dates with some friends after school and they have been getting birthday party invitations!  Annelyse will be doing ballet (Lo is still too young).  We have also got them involved with swimming lessons at one of the schools closer to home.  It's even been cute to hear them pronouncing words with an Irish accent and to hear their vocabulary expand with some of the Gaelic words they are learning! Here are a few examples of Irish sayings, similar to what they are learning (courtesy of irishcultureandcustoms.com)...

Enjoying dinner on our veranda on a nice summer day.

Met a lobster fisherman at the harbor.  He showed us his catch (and his arm where one of them snapped him.. ouch).   I need to get a kayak and some lobster pods! Good eating!

Here Annelyse is dressed up in some of the items in the store at the front of the Dalkey Castle and Heritage Center.  They give medieval performance.

Here are a couple little video snippets from a cold fall evening when we were walking back from dinner.  The sun was going down and as you can hear, the wind is whipping.  The Irish fascinate me with how they swim in the water here.  It can't get much above 60 degrees in the summer and here it may be closer to 50 degrees.  Crazy!  The kids often times can be seen jumping off of the piers or the other walls surrounding the harbor.

I thought this post would be a good time to talk about how amazing we think the parks and play equipment are here in Europe, very natural in looks, unique in their designs and very fun for the kids (and parents) using them.  Here are some of the best pictures we have of these...

Giant maze of bushes with a giant outlook platform (where I'm taking the picture) and slide in the middle.

That's it for now!!!  More to come as time permits... Hopefully more soon!

Love,
Russ, Lyndsey, Annelyse and Loralye



Week of August 30, 2015... Taking It Easy With Some Local Entertainment

The week started off as expected with a new routine and little brains firing on all cylinders.  It is amazing to watch how adaptable and self-assured the girls are.  Of course we have had some tears and conversations about not wanting to go to school... EVERYDAY (the nerve we have making them go to school 5 days a week!), the girls are settling in and have already started teaching us some Irish words and prayers.  We think they might be starting to pick up a bit of an accent as well. One word that is obviously changing is Mom... I am no longer Mommy and I am now, "Mummy."  I really do wonder how they will sound when we move back! 

We decided to do some of the more touristy things in Dublin this week seeing we were all tired from a long first week at school and swim class started on Sunday at one of the local schools, Castle Park!!   We headed north to the town of Malahide to take a tour of the castle and gardens. Malahide became a permanent settlement from the coming of the Vikings, who landed in 795.  From the 1180s, the history of the area is tied to that of the Talbot family who built and lived in the Malahide Castle. 

The girls really enjoyed seeing the rooms of the children that used to live in the castle and all their old toys.  I think they found it funny that kids back then played with the same things they enjoy playing with today.  It took everything in Loralye’s being not to touch the baby-stroller which appeared as though it would fall to pieces in a slight wind.  The porcelain baby dolls and well-loved teddy bears were also quite intriguing.  Those toys along with the “potty-chair" were topics of conversation for the afternoon. 

One of the folktales they told was about the jester who lived in the castle and eventually hung himself from the balcony where musicians used to play...  There was a tiny door that he supposedly used to use to get up to the lookout tower to watch for intruders.  I wanted the girls to get a picture in front of the door, however, they were quite disturbed by this story and the thought of a tiny man (or his ghost) who potentially lived inside was more than a little troubling!  Reluctantly, they went and stood by the door once I pinkie promised that no one was in there. 

Lots of history, strange paintings and lots of things to break.  We couldn't get out of here fast enough with these two in tow and the selfie stick swinging wildly!

Much better... on the outside and back to our silly selves! 

Balcony where the Jester would hang out and where musicians would play during parties

Yes, the Peacock was contemplating coming inside and Annelyse thought this was amazing!!

Before leaving Malahide, the girls convinced us to take a little ride on the Toots Train. Yes, they are still very much interested in any and all forms of transportation. It was a nice little ride through the town with a charismatic and animated tour guide!  He even informed us he liked the Midwest and would be traveling to Wisconsin soon.  This is not typical of the Irish as it's common to hear from them that the Irish "chase the sun" since the weather here is so mild and often overcast with rain.  Most trips you hear about the Irish taking to the states are to Florida or California.  

The fierce Vikings!

Later that afternoon we went on a Viking Splash Tour!! The vehicle used for the tour is a DUKW (aka Duck) which is a six-wheel-drive amphibious vehicle built by General Motors and used during WWII for the transportation of goods and troops over land and water. The girls had seen these vehicles each time they were in the city and were fascinated with the way the group of people on the boat would yell and carry on as they drove through the city... while wearing the Viking hats with horns of course!   

The other (equally fierce) Vikings!

This tour was quite hysterical and the tour-guide really made the trip! He had all kinds of terms for people which ended with 'Celts' because, I think this is who the Vikings were always fighting. Specifically, he targeted people who looked like they were lost, in love or foreign... so pretty much the entire city of Dublin was fair game. The Duck took off and he started with some history flavored with his take, muddled with current politics and tabloid gossip. As we drove, when he spotted a "Celt" he would shout, "One, Two, Three..." and then all of us would raise our arms and make a Viking noise, which sounds pretty much like a pirate. This would scare the "Celt" half to death and they would either scream back, laugh and smile, or cower with embarrassment. He truly was an entertainer... lots of laughter on this tour!! Of course, a highlight of the tour for the girls was when the car drove right into the water and became a boat. Loralye kept asking where the wheels went and when I told her that they didn't go anywhere, they were still underneath, she was adamant that couldn't be the case. Even when we drove right out of the water, she was still insistent someone put them back on... ugh... If I am this stupid now, can you imagine how stupid I will be when she is 15?  

Sunday we started swim class, which of course was a hit!  The girls will surely look forward to their time in the pool each week, assuming the temperature of the pool goes up a few degrees!!  The Irish seem to be much more tolerant of the cold water than we are.  It's not uncommon to see them jumping off the piers at the harbor and swimming in 50 or 60 degree weather in water which is equally cold or colder.  

This Sunday was also one of the local festivals in our little village, LOBSTERFEST!  There were all kinds of food vendors, musicians, games for the kids, etc.  There was good music, entertainers and lots of good barbecued food to be had.  Burgers, shrimp, crab legs and half lobsters... YUM. The highlight for the girls were the most intricate balloon creations I have ever seen.  Each of these took at least 10 minutes to make.  He meticulously drew the faces on after the balloon was finished.  Definitely a sight to see... people were giving him all kinds of characters to do and each time he was successful! 

Notice Lo is missing... She had been scared already by the lobster on stilts and pirates.  She wouldn't come near this friendly lobster mascot.

This guy on stilts and the pirates (not pictured) scared Lo enough that  she wouldn't even take a picture with the friendly Lobsterfest mascot.

 

We have been trying to take a walk most evenings, because we can tell the seasons are starting to change and it is getting chillier each day.  One evening we walked down to Dillon park and while the girls and I were looking for blackberries, Russ ventured out to the rocks overlooking the water.  Of course, as soon as I took my camera out to take a picture, the girls spotted Russ and insisted on climbing down to see him.  The series of pictures leading up the final ones that I typically post are always entertaining.  To begin, Loralye shows me her muscles and announces “I am going to climb the mountain!”  And off she goes…

Annelyse, decides she too is going to climb the mountain and true to her form, ensured her outfit for our excursion was totally impractical; dressed to the nines, high-heels and cardigan.   Seeing that school ‘controls’ what she wears daily, we have minimized our nagging related to her clothing choices.   Here she is posing… notice Russ in the background racing up the mountain to get Lo who has successfully scaled the said mountain in 1.2 seconds.  

And here is a nice video of Annelyse climbing...

As I mentioned in my last post, we really do get a lot of rainbows... and yes a little rain on the side :)   One evening it was raining and the girls asked if we could go for a walk... now while conditions weren't ideal, there is not a great chance you won't encounter at least a sprinkle most days.  We headed up to our favorite little park and after the rain stopped, the most vivid rainbow I have ever seen appeared.  It was so close we could see both where it started and stopped, which made for lots of good hypotheses from the girls on where the pot of gold was and where the Leprechauns were!  Then, all of a sudden, another rainbow appeared above the first.    Of course we took lots of pictures and when we were looking back through them, Loralye said... "Hey, the pot of gold must be on my head."   On our walk back home, an older lady named Elizabeth stopped us and asked if we were the ones taking the pictures at the park.  She asked if we could send her some and gave us her e-mail address.  I couldn't help but take a picture of her and husband sitting at the harbor enjoying the fading rainbow.

Ms. Elizabeth

Nice panoramic with the DOUBLE RAINBOW.

Double Rainbow. Wow.

OMG, a Double Rainbow

My selfie-stick related rants have backfired....  Annelyse's fascination (borderline obsession) with the stupid things have only intensified and now is rubbing off on Loralye (shoot me now).  Russ, being the wonderful doting father that he is, caved and bought them one... The jury's out on what kind of husband this makes him. 

Remember that super-old castle I mentioned above, Malahide... the one with lots of antiques and signs that said, "keep-off", "don't touch", etc.    The place where I watched little hands and feet more than the tour guide to ensure we didn't break history. Well, Russ must have been beyond impressed with this place because decided this was the perfect moment to reveal his coveted purchase to the selfie-stick junkies, mid-tour!  Yes, the stupid selfie-stick made its inaugural debut in the middle of a presentation, in a room full of glass, chandeliers, floor-to-ceiling paintings, crystal figurines, antique furniture and 20 other people.  Instantaneously, the "me-first" started and fighting ensued. Now, we have two girls competing for an item I completely despise, in a very confined space, with the winner waving a prized stick all over the room and the other trying to snatch it away using her best tackle move.  As an FYI, the jury returned their verdict and he is lucky they oppose the death penalty here in Ireland. 

Here are some of the selfies they have taken recently...  

This thing will disappear shortly and I plan to blame it on the Toothfairy.  Perhaps when she comes for the tooth, she will take the selfie-stick as payment for the chocolate coins Annelyse has insisted she will be bringing.  

Most nights I can't wait for bedtime snuggles, yet know these are the moments and stories that will be our best memories in the years to come. 

Love,

Russ, Lyndsey, the Little Stooges