Happy St Patrick’s Day!!
Well, yesterday started quite well with #2′s teachers singing his praises in the most wonderful way. They’ve just done national tests and I was assured that ‘whatever else, you’ve no need to worry about him academically’ (okaaaayyy…, which means I have to worry about him in what other way?). It was all good generally, apart from the small matter of his inability to sit still, and his handwriting being in need of a new spider. When I’d picked myself up after the shock of it all, we headed to Dublin to see our lovely dentist where the poor little chap received the bad news that one of his teeth was in a bad way, and seeing as it’s a first tooth and likely to fall out within the year, it was best just to whip it out. Ouch. In typical #2 style, he was very brave (in fact, it was his mother who was in danger of fainting) but still – not a nice experience. Actually, it’s the first extraction I’ve watched and it was quite fascinating to see how much pressure the dentist had to apply in order to get the little sucker out. Nasty.
So, we spent the first half of St Patrick’s Day engaged in that most Irish of pastimes: waiting for the electricity to come back on. Power cuts are particularly problematic (ooh, I’ve gone all alliterative) here, because we don’t have mains water and although having our own well may be terribly rustic and all that, it means that a power cut means no pump to bring the water up and therefore no water. Eventually around lunchtime we were back up and running, leaving us gutted as we missed Soccer AM, and our favourite bits particularly, which are ‘Crossbar Challenge’ and ‘Showboating’ (if you don’t know, I won’t bother explaining).
Anyhoo, seeing as I’d just battled through gale force winds and driving rain for fifteen minutes persuading Louis that it wasn’t too scary to wee in such conditions, we decided against the raft race (doubtless the poor competitors wished they’d decided the same) and headed for Supermac’s, the all-Irish equivalent of McDonalds. Living in the middle of nowhere means no junk food – generally a good thing, but as an odd treat (for getting good reports and enduring the dentist) we enjoy ingesting some crap. Hubby had tried Supermac’s before in Waterford and I have to say it was very nice. I had a ‘Supermac’ (no surprises there) and garlic fries (big fat chips smothered in garlic mayo – yum!), followed by a warm chocolate muffin with ice cream (stop raising those eyebrows, I shared it with Hubby, and anyway I had a diet coke so it’s okay). We actually gave it a higher score than Macs, being sparklingly clean, with very friendly staff, a huge choice and much nicer fries to boot.
So, back to the sticks, Hubby dragged the boys out in Hurricane Paddy to hunt for firewood and in typical ‘King Dad’ fashion, stood and sniggered behind the video camera as they struggled home with half a tree. Honestly, children. They’re rubbish at being slaves.
[...] discovering a bit more of our new home by exploring beautiful Connemara, to our first St Patrick’s Day. Then there’s discovering who I am, who I’m definitely not, and a bit about [...]