My favorite part of Ireland is when you first get to Granny's and get out of the car. There is usually some kind of a breeze and the air is so fresh that, after the stuffy plane ride, you feel like you are taking your first breath of fresh air ever. Granny always has sausages and tea ready. We put the boys in beds that are prewarmed with hot water bottles. Granny had made the spare room into a nursery and it was so cute. A little toy box between two little white covered bed, good Irish linens of course. Then I sunk into our bed for the most glorious nap on earth.
When we woke up (and ate again of course) we went for a walk down the lane. It's a little sad, especially for Ger I think, that a lot has changed (mostly for the good but some changes are hard to take). There isn't as much farming in the area anymore and the lane isn't this pristine pathway anymore. There isn't much point to it's up keep if no one is herding animals down it so it's a bit over grown. The fields owned by the neighbor who kept the lane trimmed doesn't seem to go down there at all anymore.
After our walk Liam and Ger played catch in the front yard. In Ireland almost everywhere you can see for miles. It was a beautiful evening and the sun doesn't set until almost 10 PM. In mid summer it doesn't set until about 11:30 and there is always a glow of sun on the horizon. It's very hard to convince yourself (much less your kids) that the day is over and it's time to come in. We played in the yard and on their tractors until well past dinner time. Then we went up to see the house that Ger's brother is building. It's in a field adjacent to the field Ger owns. A beautiful spot on top of a hill that overlooks the lake "Lough Derg". Paddy has a great eye for this kind of thing. His house is in the best spot on the property to get the best of the view and the least of the wind. The colors and tiles and wood work he picked are gorgeous. It's going to be a great house. Very light, lots of windows. As I went into the master bedroom I couldn't help but wish for him that he could find a nice girl to marry so he'd have someone (besides his parents) to share this all with. It's so hard to find anyone though, in such a remote area.
The next few days we stayed close by. The kids loved just being outside. The fields are great to run through. Although, since Paddy doesn't have dairy cows anymore they aren't as glorious as they once were. Again, there is no point to putting that amount of work into their care when they just aren't being used like they were. I miss how is was but I am sure they don't miss the hard work and heart ache that often goes along with dairy farming. They keep a small beef herd now though. During our trip they lost a cow to pneumonia. While most farmers in the area would have gotten rid of her at the first sign of trouble they kept her and tried everything to save her. I think they were really sad to see her go.....even though she was meant for hamburger at some point.
The day after we arrived we went to "the cousins". Ger's mom has a first cousin who has 6 daughters, each of these girls have 5 or 8 kids themselves. The live in Dublin but have purchased a huge near-by house to vacation. Basically the younger kids are left there all summer and the adults come and go to mind them. The older kids also come and go as their schedules allow. There is never a dull moment there, for grown ups or kids. We spent the whole afternoon and most of the evening. When we got home Seamus entertained everyone with his tricks. He kept kissing Paddy's leg and then turning to the room and scrunching up his nose and waving his hand in front of his face and saying "eww smewwy". The more people laughed the more he did it.
I thought perhaps Granny could straighten out his picky eating if I just stayed out of it but he brought Granny to the dark side instead. He ate almost nothing but pie and cereal. Granny baked a few things and there is so few things over there with artificial ingredients that at least he ate better then home.
The post man in Ireland goes door to door and puts mail in a slot in the door. Seamus thought this was fascinating and spent much of his time putting things through the door to Grandad or Granny who would put them back to him. There is very little to do for a kid inside in Ireland. Internet isn't the norm and most people don't have much TV (although, thankfully the in-laws have satellite TV). Liam was outside non-stop. Ger played catch with him or he road with him to Paddy's new house to work on something or other. He said he would live there if they had baseball. That night we did a little driving around. I find the twilight time in Ireland to be kind of melancholy. Unless you are doing something with the cousins it's often very lonely feeling at this time of the day. They have few indoor distractions and when the sun starts to set it feels rather closed in. On this night it felt even worse. I couldn't stop thinking of all the things that could never be. We couldn't live there without giving up so much of what we have here. We can't get there as much as we like. We can't have both sets of grandparents spend time with them at once. If they are with one set they are missing and being missed by the other set. Ger can never spend a bunch of time with his brother and he's been gone so long that they don't really know how to spend time together anymore anyway.
Church was something we were fearing. Seamus can be quite a handful in church and in Ireland they don't mess around like they do here. We were pleasantly surprised. First of all church isn't as long as it is here. Secondly there was a huge Hurling match on in the afternoon (Tipperary vs Limerick) so the priest skipped the homily completely and raced through the prayers like he needed to get to the bathroom. 30 minutes and we were done. Even Seamus could manage that. We visited the graveyard on the way out. It's a lovely historical trip. They know the families and stories of each person there.
That evening Ger's first cousin and her family came to visit. This was the high point of Liam's trip. I love Veronica and John, they have been so good to us and never forget the boys. She's the sweetest woman on earth and John is just a nice, down to earth, honest guy. He is just recovering from a long battle with cancer that required they both give up their jobs. He's had a tough, tough year and it was so great to see him happy, healthy looking, energetic. They are a bit older then us and have 12 year old and a 15 year old. They also brought the son of another first cousin of Gers.
The boys are very sweet and were so interested to see Liam's baseball glove and try them out. Luckily we had one for each. The each got one and tossed the ball around a bit and then started taking their own sports equipment out of their car. Hurls, soccer balls. They eventually made up some game that involved the gloves, baseball, hurls and some tackling. It was fun whatever it was.
It was nearly 9 PM when we saw the guy across the street driving a combine into his field to cut his barley. The two oldest boys pretended not to care while Liam and Mark had to go see what was up. We walked over to watch the action and after a bit the older boys came over too. That was so fun for the boys. It amazes me how late the sun stays out and how late in the day they stay working (or start working). Liam was so sad to see the boys go. Which they did after a trip to see Paddy's house and some sandwiches. It's hard for him to have so much fun with new friends, see them once and then not again for a year or two.
The founder of Paddy's company had died during the week so unexpectedly Paddy was getting Monday off out of respect. He wanted to have Ger help him pick out some things for his house in the Limerick area so we made a plan to head that way and have Ger leave me and the boys at Bunratty castle while they did there thing.
As is usual on a farm, Paddy had issue after issue and the plan we made wasn't going to work out. We left for Bunratty anyway and hoped that if he did make it where he had to go he could call Ger and he'd meet him. I was happy to have Ger with me anyway. We went to Durty Nellies for lunch. I love that place, mostly their pavlova. Seamus was so excited to see the folk park and castle that he got up and left the restaurant when he was done eating. We had to dash out after him so no pavlova. I told him what he missed by running out and all day he said he just wanted to got back to "Durty Bills" (not sure where he got Bill from) and have his special dessert.
The folk park was nice and relaxing and it was a beautiful day. We walked around until the kids were tired and got in the car to drive to Clare. Liam wanted to go to a beach. The beaches aren't great. The first one we stopped at was just rocks. Really steep and full of garbage that washed ashore. We didn't stay because we couldn't stand or sit.
I was surprised to see such a busy "beach scene" all along the coast. It was kind of cold and it's hard to find places with sand where you can go in an swim. I am sure the water is freezing but they still swim and camp and hang out like it's South Beach. We did find a little place to sit and play in the sand. The kids were upset that we didn't pack their dollar Walmart sand pails for the trip. We didn't stay long because, being home with Granny, we were used to eating every hour. (Odd but I lost 6 lbs) . We drove forever to get to this pub we love in Doolin. We brought my family there during our wedding trip after a cold day at the cliffs and it was so nice and warm and great. We have a great picture of my mom with a Guinness mustache. This trip was a HUGE disappointment. Seamus was acting up so the barman said he'd send the kids meals out first. Well good enough but the kids were done with their meals for a half hour before ours showed up (even though we asked where they were about 6 times). The meals were great (from what we tasted since we had to choke them down because the boys wanted to leave). We stopped at a shop for road food and made the long trek back home.
Now here is where I need to apologize to my beautiful and sweet Goddaughter. She was Seamus' age when she came to Ireland for our wedding. Three is the WRONG age to be bringing a kid on a trip like this. They don't adjust to the time either for eating or sleeping and it's much harder for them then any other age group. Morgan took this same trek home and was just DONE. My sister put a little blanket on baby Daniel but did not have one for Morgan so for I'd have to say about an hour Morgan said, over and over and over "I want my blanket, I want my blanket." We actually refer to this portion of the country as the "I want my blanket area." At the time we said "oh Morgan, you are so difficult" and other such things about Morgan's behavior. WELL.....Seamus made Morgan's trip look like a trip to paradise and Morgan an angel sent from heaven. We kept waiting for him to sleep as Morgan finally had but he never did. He eventually went from cranky to just plain annoying, bringing Liam with him. The invented this saying that they said over and over (there must be fairies in the area that cast a spell on kids to make them repeat themselves in this part of the country). Liam and Seamus started saying "ribbit, ribbit, fingers on bibbit." It makes NO sense and drove us completely insane.
We decided Tuesday was a stay at home day. We played outside and when Seamus tried to nap we left him with Granny and took Liam in the fields. This was for me one of the best days. We spent hours and hours roaming the fields, Ger telling us about his special secret places from when he was a kid. The cows followed us everywhere because they were curious about Liam, having never seen a kid up close. There are two fairy ports in the fields. These are entrances to the "other world". Ger told Liam all kinds of stories about Changelings and things. We were starting to believe Seamus might be a Changeling. In old Ireland they used to dress small children in rags to make them look ugly because if a fairy found a beautiful child they would change a nasty, cranky fairy for the beautiful child. Seamus was becoming quite spoiled and rather cranky and think he might have been switched. In America I think they always called this the terrible twos.
We had a shower or two during our walk and ducked into hedges to avoid them. The cows would peer in at us. One used her long tung to pull down a branch to eat it. Liam thought this was so awesome he drew a picture of it.
When we got back of course Seamus was up and entertaining Granny who was feeding him whatever he wished. We decided to go to Terryglass to the playground. It's beautiful there but the playground was rather dull. We went on to Borrisokane. That playground was amazing. It was very new and clean. It had thick rubber titles under all the equipment and everything moved or spun. We were having a blast. There were very few people there. Across the parking lot is a bunch of duplexes that they call "Pram Row". These houses and all their costs (TV, phone, power, etc) are provided free to single mothers. Children are the prized possessions of Ireland and a lot of public funds go to their care. This allows moms to work very little, if at all and be home with their kids. The playground is part of that I believe. They houses are very nice too and well kept.
Ger and I were sitting on a bench watching the boys play. I have to say I love the way my boys play together. We both had our eyes on Liam as he tried to come down one of those dumb ladders that go up and then over to the equipment, like an upside L. He was trying to get down the ladder but was facing out instead of in. He fell and because he was holding the ladder his hands were behind him and he landed first on the left side of his face. He was going so fast that his feet flipped over his head, snapping his neck back and scrapping his face on the rough rubber tile. We both thought he'd damaged his neck and he tried to stand but couldn't immediately. We ran to him yelling "don't move, don't move". He was covered in blood when we got to him. The whole left side of his face was an abrasion and his cheek was swelling like mad. I had only diaper wipes and I wasn't sure where he was bleeding from and how big the wounds were and didn't want to use a wipe. The blood was flowing into his eye and coming out his mouth. Thankfully there was a lady playing with her son who was a nurse. She had gauze pads, bandages and sterile water. She handed it all to me but I guess I was a little shaken because she took them out of my hands again and cleaned him up and bandaged him. The cut on his head producing all that blood was very minor but he's cut the side of his lip and under his nose rather badly and he landed on a stone which made an ugly bruise on his cheek.
When he was cleaned up he said he still wanted to play but when he stood up he looked glazed and didn't move to go anywhere. We took him home and his grandparents made a fuss over him and put frozen veggies on his cheek. He looked much better after a bit of time. Then after a round of "it could have been much worse"'s we all went to bed.
We planned on visiting Galway the next day but were promised a day of rain so stayed in. The morning looked fine so we went back to the playground since the boys felt so gypped the day before. Liam met a local boy named Luke and they chatted and played. I overheard Liam introduce Seamus to his new friend and Seamus was a great climber. I was saying to Ger how I love that even when Liam finds his own friend he's still very nice to Seamus and says nice things about him. At that very second Seamus says "Yeah and this is my brother Liam, he's tanoxious" (he means obnoxious, it's the best he can say it). At least it works one way.
We had to spend most of the rest of the day indoors. It was a trial. Grandad can only watch so much kid TV and turned on the news and his soaps so then we had to find other ways to keep the boys from destroying the house. This was my least fun day.
Thursday we took off early for Galway. I love this city. It looks so old and historic but the people are very modern and artsy. There are no cars down the main streets and they have plenty of street performers. They keep the kids entertained while we take turns dashing into little shops to pick up odds and ends. Liam was in a great shopping mood so he and I shopped while Seamus danced in the street with Ger. We had showers on and off and it was cool but it didn't hinder our fun. We ate at Kings Head which Ger and I always mistake for a pub we went to on our honeymoon that we loved and could never find again. We will find it again.
While on our honeymoon in Galway we walked to the end of the feet only street to where the cars were and this car beeped and pulled over to the side of the road by us. We were wondering what on earth was THIS guy up to. Turned out to be Dave and Jenn, who came for our wedding and stayed to celebrate their first anniversary (most all other guests had gone home to America). We chatted about where we were all staying and oddly enough, we were staying in the same town. We had a great dinner together and it was so nice to have friends to spend time with. How odd that we live in the same town and hardly happen upon each other but in a whole different country we ended up in the same place at the same time.
After a little shopping and the most incredible frozen yogurt I've ever had (that the kids hated....all the more for me). We hopped in the car for Salthill. It's the next town north of Galway and is a big beach town. They have a lot of beautiful sandy beaches that just go unused because the climate is disagreeable. We loved walking the beaches and looking for shells. On one beach we found a whole pack of kite surfers. We had fun watching them but the spray was blowing so hard off the water it actually hurt your skin. We came back into the town and toyed with the idea of going to the indoor pools but in Ireland they make you where a swim cap. There was no way I wanted to get in one or struggle Seamus into one so we opted for the aquarium. It was a great choice.
They have only fish and sea life local to the west coast of Ireland. As you first walk in they have a tank that every so often a huge bucket of water gets thrown in to simulate the surf. It's loud and splashed out. Seamus backed up and said "I am NEVER going in there". We forced him in but both boys seemed really afraid. The whole middle of the bottom floor was this low (like waist high) tank. HUGE. Full of baby sharks, rays and these sideways, sand color fish that hide down at sand level. It was all a touch tank as was most of the aquarium. There were works all over the place to help pick up fish and things if you wanted to hold them. Even lobsters, crabs, star fish. It was awesome and by the end the boys didn't want to leave. We got some food and did other things and came back to do it again it was so fun.
In the parking lot they had the Green Dragon. The Volvo Ocean Race boat sponsored by Irish companies. We would have loved to see this race come around Ireland but we missed it by a few months. We got to tour the boat though which Ger and the boys loved.
After another trip through "Seamus' fishes" we went on home. Ger wanted to get a closer look at one of the windmill farms that are popping up all over Ireland so we started towards one of them. Three miles or more up this cow path we drove. Literally we had to wait for cows to move to go on. Now this was unspoiled land (except for the path made to bring wind turbines up the hill). It was a fun trip, although it really felt like we were doing something illegal which we probably were.
The boys fell asleep on the way home and he had a nice quiet ride the rest of the way. It was way closer then our trip from Clare.
That night Paddy was dosing the cows with some medicine and a man was coming to pick up some of them for the slaughter house. We left the boys in with Granny and went to help. You need to get all the cows into the shed and then dose and sort them. The man arrived to take the cows he ended up taking 4. One was the mom of another cow there. I hated it. They loaded them on the truck and she never took her eyes off me. She was in for a long truck and by morning would be slaughtered. I don't think I could do that regularly. I hated watching those doe eyes knowing her moments were numbered. I could easily become a vegetarian after that.
Friday was our last day. We went to Nenagh looking for Tipperary Hurling jerseys for the boys. Clothes in general are more expensive in Ireland but the shirts were ridiculous. We couldn't justify it but did get the boys some hurls. I am still amazed at how much non-sanctioned Yankee baseball stuff is available in Ireland for a country that can't get the games on tv, radio or even the newspaper.
The afternoon we had to visit some of the older people that wanted to see us. We did this on the way to the cousins again for their end-of-summer party. There were 40 or more kids there when we got there. They had a huge, three part bouncy house and a little kid pool and all the sports equipment a kid could want. The boys had fun. There was someone for everyone and no one was left out. The older kids are so great about keeping an eye on the younger kids and even the most naughty of children knows that he can't let Seamus play on the trampoline alone and will stand there watching him until someone else comes to take over. I've seen it in every house I've visited that the older kids just naturally take responsibility for the younger. They play with them, take care of them, feed them. It's so great. There doesn't seem to be any resentment as though the older kid would be having fun if not for having to care for the little guy.
At the party there are so many kids that they feed them in shifts. Three shifts of burgers for the kid and a huge pot of curry chicken and rice for the grown ups. I was completely exhausted when we got home.
We left Seamus at home with the grandparents and went to say goodbye to the fields. I was dragging but Liam seemed to want to start the day over and have it like it was the first time we walked the fields.
The next morning we had to leave really early. I hated this because we really wanted to take time to thank Ger's parents for all the work that's involved in keeping us. They give up their car. She is cooking and doing dishes around the clock to keep us fed. Then on her "down time" she's baking. It's a ton of work and they refuse any help. But we have to just brush cheeks with kisses and get in the car and go. Seamus flatly refused to kiss anyone and would not wave goodbye out the window. We swear it won't be two years before we go back. We weren't ready to go home at all.
The plane ride home was bumpy too. The plane is 3 seats, aisle, 3 seats and on the way over we sat in a line with Ger across the aisle. The way back we sat two and two against the window with a stranger sitting on the aisle next to us. Liam and Ger were behind Seamus and I. Seamus was full of energy and didn't want to stay buckled despite the "shivering" of the plane as he called it. We had to go over the hurricane and went to 38,000 feet but still had a ceiling of clouds and a rough trip. Seamus finally fell asleep after about 4 hours and slept for 2 glorious hours. When he woke he ate his complete dinner (the most he'd eaten in 10 days). He said his dinner was very yummy and his tummy was happy. We landed an hour later.
I am sure other memories will come as the days go by and I will post those too. It was a great trip.
