- Our Whistle-stop Tour of New York City with Kids Part Two: Where We Stayed and Ate
- Our Whistle-stop Tour of New York City With Kids Part One: Getting There
- Our Family Trip to Berlin
- Packing Essentials for a Family Ski Holiday
- The Big (and Not So Big) Move
- The day Shawn Mendes taught my daughter an amazing life lesson
- 10 Things for kids to do in Costa Adeje, Tenerife
- The Croke Park Stadium Tour
- Tips for making the most of a day out at Tayto Park
- 10 Kids TV characters you will love to hate as a parent
The black out (and other life updates)
Hello!
It has been a while since I’ve posted here as I have been insanely busy with other stuff so I just thought I would take a few minutes and catch up.
All is good here in Learner Mama land. We had a lovely Easter holidays from school which included a trip to Rosslare to my in-laws mobile home. I hope to be blogging really soon about a couple of great spots in the area if you are down that way this summer so stay tuned for that.
My Mum’s first anniversary was appropriately marked at the beginning of this month. I approached the date with absolute dread. From the 14th April, the day she was rushed to hospital, until the 4th of May the anniversary of her funeral I felt like a dark cloud hung over head. Maybe in part that is why I didn’t have the energy or motivation to blog (or maybe I am just too damn lazy!).
In reality it was okay. Sad but fine. My brother, his wife and three kids all came over to Dublin for the weekend. When the cousins get together there is no time for sadness! We had a lovely Chinese takeaway in my Dad’s house on the Saturday evening, myself and my husband Niall hosted everyone in our house on Sunday evening and then Monday, her actual anniversary we all went to Mass followed by brunch and a visit to the grave. The grave was the hardest. I still cannot get my head around the fact she is dead and every time I see the grave I just flash back to the coffin lowering, with her body in it, down into that deep dark hole. I was slightly fragile for the rest of the day and by fragile I mean if you said hello to me I may have burst out crying. Thankfully it was a lovely day and I sat in the garden and around 6 pm my husband handed me a glass of wine while he cooked a BBQ. A toast to my beautiful Mum. Gone but never forgotten and always loved.
In happier May news my little boy, my middle child, made his First Holy Communion. Such a different experience to his older sister who had her dress months in advance and was all talk of hair and accessories for weeks. My little boy just sat back and eventually after returning from our Easter break we thought we had better get a suit sorted. A trip to Marks and Spencer sorted that and he was very definite about wanting a red bow tie. He scrubbed up so well on the day and his teacher had them so well versed in the church. He did a little reading and just shone on the day. I couldn’t have been more proud of him. We had a lovely gathering at home with family and a few friends and I have to say it was really lovely.
If you are wondering about the black out in the post title, we had a black out last Saturday night. Nothing spectacular about that but I can tell you it was just one of those things that I really didn’t need at that moment. If you imagine a day that starts with dropping to GAA training at 10 am and finishes at 7.10 pm having been in and out of the car about 200 times doing either drop offs or pick ups at 10 am, 11 am, 12 noon 3 pm, then three at 4 pm (which ended up being 3.45 pm, 4 pm and 4.30 pm because I haven’t mastered the art of bi-location let alone tri-location) and finally 6 pm and 7 pm. All the while my husband, while helping out with coaching at the GAA training early on, had to go to work about lunchtime until late.
All I wanted to do at the end of that type of day was pour a very large glass of wine and kick back to watch Britain’s Got Talent or some other mindless Saturday night TV but then suddenly at 7.27 pm it was gone. No electricity. I stared at my phone, 8% power. Thankfully the wine was already chilled and I had the water already heated for baths so I decided to get the kids sorted and in pajamas and pour a glass of wine. Of course all the while my house alarm was going off because by some wonder of technology even though the battery has been disconnected and is awaiting replacement when the power goes the alarm bell seems to be working no problem. I had to put up with it ringing (as did my neighbours) before it eventually silenced itself after 30 minutes which would have been fine if the electricity didn’t make an attempted come back for a second just after 8 pm and start the alarm off again. This happened twice again during the evening.
By the time darkness fell on the house I had three terrified kids who all voted to sleep in my bed. I had to sit in the darkened room by single candle light. I have to say I suddenly felt very vulnerable. What if something serious happened? How would I call anyone. I had no mobile phone (as my 8% power didn’t do me for very long!), my house phone works on power too and my husband was off in the city centre, ok technically working, but wining and dining. It was a long evening but, eventually, just as my husband was coming home, the electricity came back. I have never been so happy to do absolutely nothing last Sunday morning.
Finally, with all of the above out-of-the-way I am full of energy for the next few weeks. I was going to say I am looking forward to attending the Shawn Mendes concert with my first born. At ten-years-of-age she is just mad about him and last December we gave her tickets, for his Dublin concert, for her birthday. Now, after the awful events to hit Ariana Grade’s concert in Manchester she is scared to go. She cried herself to sleep last night. We’d all like to wrap our little ones up in cotton wool but this is the sad reality of our world. There are bad things happening all the time, it is so tragic to watch but we have to try to remember that lots of good is happening too. We have tried to reassure her that these type of incidents are rare so I hope she regains her composure and we’ll have a great time. Evil will not win. I have to thank Shawn Mendes for this great tweet which I’m hoping will bouy her spirits.
— Shawn Mendes (@ShawnMendes) May 23, 2017
Stay tuned for lots of new content coming soon and hopefully we get to have a great (and safe) time at Shawn Mendes.
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