Living in Ireland: Exploring Our New Country

For our friends and family back home, today is just a little bit of random life as viewed through our iPhone lens.

We know Ireland’s beautiful summer weather is fleeting, so we paused for a picture one night. I’m not 100% sure, but I think Handy Husband was trying to blend into his surroundings. This is hard to do when you are standing next to a kid wearing multiple colors and prints.

I admire her sense of style bravado. Wearing an uniform to school is going to be a big adjustment for this 9-year-old. She did ask me if she could wear any headband she wanted to school. My answer? Well, they didn’t mention anything about headbands…yet.

The kids and I have been spending a fair amount of time exploring the villages close to us and have found some cool parks and trails. Multiple times on these adventures we’ve also found a carnival. Oh goodie.

My kids have some sort of built-in radar for carnival rides. If there is a carnival ride or cotton candy in the vicinity, they will find it. Mark my words. This one was in the small seaside town of Bray.

Yes, the sky really was that blue that day. You can see a small slice of the Irish Sea in the background too.

Handy Husband still run commutes to work. If he runs the entire way, it is roughly 13 miles one way. That’s a half marathon, so he doesn’t do that everyday. Slacker.

What he usually does is some sort of split commute. He hops on the train for part of the way and then hops off at whichever train station suits his fancy and runs the rest of the way. I believe he’s averaging about 60 miles per week.

On part of his commute, he runs past Bono’s house. Yes, that Bono. Part of the compound’s gardens are visible from the road.

For some reason, Handy Husband hasn’t been invited in for tea yet. Keep trying, honey.

I’m not sure if I’ve ~~whined abou~~t mentioned it, but we don’t have a car here in Ireland. Public transportation is pretty good, so we don’t technically need a car.

There have been a few times when it would have been convenient to have a car though…like when you need propane for the barbecue and the closest place to buy propane is a mile away.

It turns out that buying the Berg Pedal Car and Trailer wasn’t a completely frivolous expense. Our little guy, thankfully, LOVES to haul stuff in his trailer. You should see him back that thing up…he does a better job than I would.

Part of our reason for moving south of Dublin was the beach. We have three different access points to the beach – all within walking distance from our house.

At this particular location we found a large pipe covered in seaweed. Why is the pipe there? I don’t want to know.

If you follow me on Instagram, you’ll recognize this photo. My sweet girl wanted to see how the seaweed felt on her feet.

We also learned about how tides work that day. When we got to the beach the kids could walk quite a way out on that large pipe.

As the tide came in, they saw how the pipe slowly became covered up with water.

And, yes, they stood there for a very long time..at least 30 seconds…before one of them pushed the other off the pipe.

I’m just sharing this photo because it makes me laugh.

Handy Husband and I do not have a ton of photos of just us. We’d much rather take pictures of our cute kids. So on this particular day we gave both the kids a phone to snap a shot of us and this is the best one we got.

I love the angle.

Handy Husband snapped this photo while out and about in the Temple Bar area of Dublin recently.