Friday, October 31, 2014

Wooooooohhhhh

We're all ready to go for Hallowe'en here. Huge excitement as this will be the boys' first time trick or treating in the dark as opposed to the blazing Australian sun :-)


My Le Creuset pumpkin comes in handy this time of year...


...for gruesome ghoulish jelly!


The table is set for our party later on. Hats off to anyone who hand-crafts their own decorations and table pieces, Aldi did the job for me :-)


Thankfully my boys are more crafty than me and their spooky artwork is being displayed proudly :-)

Now all we need to do is "Zombie Up" and go begging for sweets from strangers (Hallowe'en can be so confusing for kids!!!)   :-)

Have fun everyone!

Thursday, October 30, 2014

The Beach

My parents live by the coast in County Meath. Their house is a 15 minute walk from the beach and we really love staying there. During the Summer it is fab to bring the boys down to the beach with their buckets and spades, collecting shells and pebbles and discovering jelly fish and other sea life. Our Summer beach trips always involve ice-cream from the van on the beach followed by a trip to the amusements and some funfair rides.

We love visiting all year round though and just spent a few days there this week as it is mid-term break here in Ireland. Being die-hard beach fans we rugged up and went for a lovely brisk morning walk. The tide was out leaving lots of treasures like seaweed and drift wood for the boys to explore. 



At this time of year ice-cream is replaced by gorgeous hot chocolate at the beach café. Plenty of marshmallows and shaved chocolate on top, yum!


My sister and her family also live in County Meath and the cousins all love getting together especially at the local indoor funfair :-)


County Meath is full of historical sights and we usually visit one on each of our trips. It is also very close to County Louth and this time we went to see this beautiful Church in Drogheda (pardon the fuzzy phone pic) which houses the preserved head of Saint Oliver Plunkett (sounds a bit gruesome but my eldest thought it was pretty cool).

We always come back from our trips nice and relaxed yet refreshed at the same time and of course my boys love getting spoilt by their Nana and Grandad and aunties! Can't wait for our next visit :-)

Monday, October 20, 2014

Sydney

You may remember a while back I wrote this post about my decision not to feature photos of my kids on the blog anymore. I decided to delete any posts with photos of my boys and still feel that was the right decision. However, looking back on my blog, now that we have left Sydney, I do feel a bit sad that my blog doesn't really contain any images of our life in the beautiful city we called home for so many years. So I thought a little pictorial tribute to the wonderful time we had in Sydney was in order. Here are some of my favourite snaps (cleverly selected to still not show my boys' faces)...

























Looking back on these photos makes me feel happy. We had such a wonderful time there and now we are back in Ireland with our boys having an equally lovely time. I am feeling a new energy for this blog and hope to start blogging more regularly again. Just give me a mo to finish getting through all the boxes that arrived on the ship from Sydney a couple of weeks ago. When I saw box after box marked "kitchenware" coming in the door and piling up I really started to wish I collected stamps instead ;-)