Norah as Mary in a Montessori Christmas Story

Norah's very first school play at Monkstown Montessori - age 3 1/2 - cast as Mary. She took her role very seriously. Most other kids had songs where they danced but Mary sat and took care of her baby and did not bother with any of that child's play. :)

The place was jam-packed with parents and grandparent and siblings. We thought we arrived early but ended up standing on the side aisle to watch the whole thing. (which was the best for photos anyway)

 First Glimpse of Mary (white shall/table cloth and blue dress/teacher's blouse)

All I can think when I see this is - her teachers deal with 30 three to four year olds, every single day??

They are incredible women.  

"Away in a Manger" - 30 seconds

(Click bottom right corner of video, to enlarge.)

"What a sleepy shepherd he is..." (click bottom right corner to enlarge video)

Shoulda' given Norah a mic, she coulda' carried all these clowns. :) I'm kidding, I'm kidding.

 

Mary is introduced and can't find her arm.

(click bottom right corner to enlarge)

Ahhh she was so proud!!

(The sweet angel next to Joseph is not not-participating for lack of desire, she is hearing-impaired and her mom knew she probably wouldn't join in on the songs. Sweetest thing - she has a twin brother in the class, who was a shepherd.)

Love this succession of photos with Norah/Mary and Aidan/Joseph. :) 

PROUD as can be. And from the looks of things here, Norah looks like she is genuinely the doting wife of Joseph.

(I think Joseph might be ready for a little nap)

 Oh, I love her. (I love how she tilts her little ankle out)

Then the teachers gave them chocolates and jellies as a treat! (and sent them on home) :)

Malahide Park and 2nd Anniversary in Dublin!

An unexpected drive to Malahide Park

Today is our two year anniversary of landing in Dublin - when Norah was only 17 months old and we had absolutely no clue how this adventure would unfold. Here we are though, two years down the road, fully situated in life, and community, and surrounded by friends and love. We are even starting to feel real sadness at the prospect of potentially leaving this place (and simultaneously, we feel excitement about returning to Seattle, or Canada, or wherever Wayne's job opportunities might take us).

For today though, on this anniversary, we are so thankful to be HERE - this place where we are overwhelmingly well-adjusted, contented and full - in every sense. It's a wonderful place to be.

This weekend we tried to make-good on our resolution to rent a car every month or two, just to explore and do normal family-life-things. This is what we did every single weekend in Seattle - go for drives, explore new parks and walks, etc. etc. Here, we never really leave Dun Laoghaire (barring flying to Paris of course!), except to move along the bus routes or the DART line. I've talked about this, ad nauseum, but having a car for a couple days is just incredible. It's only €30 for the weekend so its more than worth it and it leaves us feeling like we can handle another month of brutal winter walking. Well, today Wayne had the day off work so we drove Norah to school in the morning (cutting out the 4 mile-round trip in walks), Wayne worked while she was in school and then we picked her up (again, in the car....awesome!) and drove out to Malahide Castle. This is about 50 minutes North of us, and so, so worth it. The drive out there is beautiful and the playground on the grounds is the best in allll of Dublin. (maybe all of Ireland...) :)

First, there are the 3-storey slides which Norah is now the perfect age for. Before she was a bit afraid of them (We had only been here one time, last year, when we took the train).

Wayne giving the big one a test-drive.

Norah coming down the 3 (or 4?) story-beast-slide. It basically forces you onto your back so here she is flying out the end of it.

Whoa, that's faster than I expected.

Oh look, the same Avoca that's in every single village and castle throughout all of Ireland. And look, it's me, STILL falling for every item and trinket in the store. I honestly don't know why I walk into Avoca's....all I do is covet every single item and leave feeling awful because I can't actually have any of them. Why do I do this to myself?? Because its just that magical in there. It is a wormhole.

The books!

The kids' section - oh my WORRRD!

Every single item is gorgeous and perfectly laid out. They manipulate you, I tell you!

Yep, soft-woollen gloves with leather bows on them - didn't know I wanted those, until this very second.

Now I'm upset that I don't have them.

Same with this skirt and sweater. Didn't know they were in the world but now I know I'm living without them....

Also, these handmade Avoca socks (actually, I DO have a couple pairs of these because Aunt Mary got me some for my birthday last year!). :) Alright, that's one thing I can rest easy about.

Oh and the handmade Irish-woolen sweaters....I know. I covet. I covet hardcore. I don't like the way Avoca makes me feel but I can't stop perusing.

 

Ok, so I finally peeled myself away and found Norah and Wayne, who very wisely chose to play hide-and-seek in the lawn instead. One thing I love about Wayne is that he somehow gets my obsession with this place, lets me peruse for 20 minutes, and doesn't even give me a bad time.  

Front Entrance to Malahide Castle

 

Malahide park is home to the most incredible zipline!! It's super long, a bit bouncy and surprisingly relaxing. I wanted to ride it over and over but Norah kept pulling us away.

Wayne havin' one last go.

An incredible day out together! Now that Wayne has finished teaching for the semester, it feels like we have him back. Today was the perfect way to celebrate our two year journey here in Ireland.

And, last but not least, tomorrow is my sister Mimi's 38th birthday! (December 3rd) This will now be the third, December 3rd, that we've been away. (arriving the first year on December 2nd). We've missed so many birthdays of friends and family but I try my best to always let our loved ones know we're thinking of them. Mimi, we love you and wish you such a wonderful year ahead! Happy Birthday!

Rental Car!!

A late-afternoon walk out the East Pier (across the road from our place)

This is my book-club, over Skype, with my sisters. Well, we spent the first 10 minutes last week discussing Sarah's eyebrows (which turned into a discussion of all of our eyebrows, naturally).

This was Norah's coloring-job last week. After school, she loves to color by herself on the carpet in the middle of our living room. She sits there and sings or hums to herself the entire time - only interrupting herself to say, "Nearly finished! Don't come over here yet! I'll bring it to your face, to show you, when I'm done". "Ok, Norah...I won't peek" (which is a wonderful hour for me because I can get things done in the kitchen and start dinner and all that good stuff).

So I knew she was working on this puzzle as she kept stopping to count the number of pieces she had left. I expected to come over and see sort of "abstract art", filling each and every square. Well, after a full hour, I was summoned by the artist and this is what she showed me. You should have heard my mom-squeal! "Nooorrraahhh! You did THIS?! It's ammmmmmmmaaaaazzzing!" - as she stood there just beaming, chest all puffed out with a big smile on her face. I was ridiculously proud of this little girl and it made me realize she's turned another big developmental milestone. Sometimes she seems the 3 she is, and sometimes she seems like a 9 year old.

A cool building in the city centre here in Dublin. This is about the 1913 Lockout and Union Rights'.

Last week I was asked to go to a running event put on by a friend who works in a running shop in the city Centre. Well, the leaders of some of the running clubs were asked to come up, where we were given free Brooks running pants, free Brooks coats, and free running socks, all to promote safety for night running. It was so fun! This was the group of us. We did a little 4 1/2 mile route around the city Centre and stopped in a few places for advertising shots for Brooks. (small price to pay!)

I finally, finally, got my copy of "The Hero with a Thousand faces" from our library. This is our book-club text, with my sisters.  I've been on a waiting list for 6 weeks!! (In the meantime I have tried 8 bookstores in Dublin, all to no avail.) It finally arrived though and while Norah and I were on the way to the park (after school), she fell asleep so I ducked into a café and read for half an hour! It was bliss. For the 6 weeks since it arrived, I've been reading an online PDF of the book, on the iPad (not my preferred way to read a book).  

Look at this little lady!

This was on Wayne's last day of teaching for the semester and he asked me to take his picture, to show how "thin and stressed" he looked. He wants me to take the exact photo in about 6 weeks to see if he changes. :) 

I feel like I get a glimpse of what Norah will look like as an older girl, here.

Seeing our friends finish a grueling mountain race - a 25Km slog through the Wicklow Mountains (all say this was much harder than a full marathon). 

Only in Dublin would they run out of 'cars' on the merry-go-round and then decide to WELD on, two little kid bikes, as a replacement. I can't quite show in the photo, how destitute this looked.

Saturday afternoon (after our jaunt into the mountains and out to Kilruddery Estate) we happened to arrive back in Dun Laoghaire for the official arrival of Santa Clause. The center of D.L. is outside our apartment building (literally) so the Christmas stalls are all set up, rides galore, and they even had choirs singing and fireworks for the occasion. Dun Laoghaire is becoming a pretty big deal!

Santa in his weird, house-car. Behind him, that glowing ride is one of those very, very tall slides (that you'd use a burlap sack on) except its an ice slide and you sit on an innertube. We'll see..

On Sunday we decided to take full advantage of still having the rental car and drove up to Killiney Hill park - Norah's favorite playground.

Drive in to Powerscourt Estate, County Wicklow

With the rental car this weekend, we decided to make the trek down to Powerscourt Estate (25 minutes from us). They had a free event where you could go into the stables and visit all the "Christmas animals". (pretty sure the "reindeer" are just deer, for example)

Pygmy goats

(You'll see my explanation on the next post but I had been inside Avoca and came out to look for them.) I walked about a block away from the Powerscourt Estate mansion to see all these people kicking the leaves and jumping in them. Well, then I see Wayne and Norah and he tells me that they started this whole thing by making a pile and suddenly there were hoards of people joining in.

You can barely see Wayne buried there!

Scheming...."Hm...4 foot pile of leaves we just made....what can we do??"

Why is Norah, all the sudden, behind that tree trunk?! (you can just see her teal coat peeking out, to the right of Wayne's bent knee)

Love the big smile on Norah's face

Haiii-YAW!

Swim, Norah, swim!

Wayne asked Norah to hold his glasses while he did his leaf-diving and we turn around to see this.



Professor Dykstra

This father and son looked like they were directly out of 1940s Ireland

Norah turned into an orb of light here but this was one of the 'funnest' (that's not a word but it's the description I want to use!) thing we have ever done together.

Driving back toward hiome, down into the village of Enniskerry. This is less than 25 minutes from our place. It'd be the equivalent of driving from Seattle to Issaquah, I suppose.

On weekends when have the car for 2 days, we never want to go home. So instead of heading straight home after Powerscourt Estate, we drove the real roundabout way, through Dublin city. (oddly enough, that teal building on the right - KC Peaches - is owned by a Seattle-native, living here in Dublin. There are 3 or 4 locations now in the city and they're very popular) 

Norah fell asleep on the way home so we stopped at Sandymount. Wayne walked wayyyy out (he's there in the middle) while I read in the car for a bit. On the far right is the West Pier in Dun Laoghaire, near our place.

It was a purely magical weekend!!