Visitors all the way from Cork City!

Yesterday Ashling, her three kids and her mum visited us.  Again another stunning day in Kinsale and the kids all played outside as the adults sipped Barry's on the patio.   The tea of course was eventually replaced with wine and beer.  Unbelievably the beer was "Blue Moon"!  The excellent local wine shop in Kinsale which is called "1601" is now selling my favourite beer (after Guinness and Murphy's needless to say!).   Gwen asked them last week if they sold it which they didn't nor ever heard of it and now they do.  How is that for service?   Anyway Ashling, lovely to see you, your mum and your kids, visit again any time.

This morning our new TV was delivered and ever since it was plugged in the girls have been glued to it as if they never saw TV before.  It has been a while bless them!  This afternoon they are going to a birthday party so get a chance to make some new friends and hopefully I get a chance to play with my new TV!

Tonight Gwen's niece (and I guess my niece too!) Kiera is driving down for the long weekend with son Shane and her boyfriend Neil.  Kiera/Neil when you arrive in Cork drive through the Jack Lynch tunnel and follow the signs to the airport as this will take you to the Kinsale Road.  Have a safe trip down and looking forward to seeing you all later on this evening.

Jungle Gym is up and running

With a lot of help from all the girls we finally have the Jungle Gym
assembled in the back garden.

Quite warm again

As previously posted we arrived back in Kinsale on Sunday night.  Monday morning Gwen, Anna and Sarah met some other mums and kids from the girls school for coffee at the Blue Haven.  I stayed at home with Jessica and also visited the Garda station to get some driving license forms stamped for no good reason other Cork County Council asking me to!  I have been messing about trying to get my old Irish license reissued for weeks now and I think I have finally jumped through all the hoops to get it back.

Weather is beautiful and quite warm that we spend all Monday afternoon at the beach which was packed but the kids loved it.  The water is freezing so we really need to get them wet suits to properly enjoy it.  Dinner that evening was Penne and Meatballs which we enjoyed with a nice Burgundy. 

Today Gwen did about 20 loads of laundry as there is good drying out!!!!  I left her with the kids and drove into the City to buy a TV.  I bought a nice plasma Panasonic that would not fit in the car so it is being delivered later in week so hopefully by the weekend we will be able to catch up on some  TV.  (it has been a long time!)

This evening I started working on putting together the girls play gym and progressed nicely.  Just have the monkey bars and swings to put up and this job will be finally done.  Girls of course helped me with it so it took about twice as long as it should.  Some pictures follow....

Back from Dublin

I followed Gwen and the girls up to Dublin on Saturday morning stopping once at toy shop to get Anna her birthday present (Super Mario for her DS). The drive from Kinsale to Gwen's mothers house took exactly 3 hours which is amazingly fast now. I am in a diesel passat so you know I was not speeding!


I arrived in Cabinteely where the birthday party preparations were well underway. Gwen was busy making a mountain of sandwiches and was not impressed that we were all calling her Mrs. Doyle! . Anna looked like she had a blast and said it was the best birthday party she ever had so big success there.


Sunday we stopped off at my parents house for lunch and then hit the road again for Cork. Travel time from Bray to Kinsale was less that 3 hours which again I struggle to believe that the road infrastructure in the country has gotten so good.


So back in Kinsale again. Projects for this week are the erection of the kids Play Gym out the back and buy a new TV (leaning towards a Panasonic Plasma). We have nice HD Sky satellite service but no TV to watch it on!


That's all to report. Some pictures from the last few days are following....

Meatballs!

This dog was lying on the road and looked like he was dead. His collar had a message saying he was deaf and blind and not lost!

Party food

Happy Birthday Anna and Congratulations Sarah on losing your 1st tooth!

Happy Birthday Anna who is 7 today. The other big news today is that Sarah lost her first tooth today which she is really excited about (as you can see from the photo) so congratulations to Sarah too. I hope the tooth fairy is good to you tonight.

I am still in Kinsale and Gwen and the girls are up in Dublin. Had the house to myself so was able to catch up on my manly chores like clearing out the garage, painting the kids play gym and finally getting my driving license paperwork done. My reward was a small rack of lamb with goose-fat roasted potatoes all cooked outside. Unbelievably tasty! If you have a cast iron skillet consider popping it directly on your BBQ and throw a few par boiled new spuds in it for brilliant outdoor roasties. You can substitute the goose fat with olive oil or butter.

21st July 2010

Last night the neighbours' daughter babysat and Gwen and I headed into town for a date. We started at the Blue Haven where we met Brian Donohoe who is over from Dallas for a golf competition at the Old Head. He was with his brother and two golfing buddies all who lived in Kinsale. Brian it was great catching up with you last night and I hope we get to see you again before you head home.

This morning I dropped Gwen and the girls to the train station in Cork as the four of went up to Dublin. I am going to follow them up on Friday to celebrate Anna's 7th birthday but in the meanwhile am home alone in this giant house. Tomorrow I am going telly shopping as my USA TV is not working with Sky HD. Those of you who thought that HDMI was a standard (me included) and all HDMI devices are compatible.....well it is not!

Cobh

Today we visited Cobh in East Cork. Cobh was formally Queenstown and prior to that Cove and is a harbour town that was the location where over 3 million Irish people boarded ships and emigrated to foreign lands. Felt good being there as returned emigrants although our journey to USA back in the early 90’s was way more comfortable and faster (even though we travelled economy!) than previous generations who travelled on the coffin ships for 6-8 weeks from Cobh to America.

Cobh was also the last port of call for the Titanic as it sailed on her ill fated voyage. The Titanic’s sister ship The Lusitania also sank close to Cobh when it was torpedoed by a German U-Boat in 1915 but I will let you Wiki “Cobh” for further history!

On the way back we stopped at Dunne’s Stores in Douglas for a big grocery shop and tonight’s dinner was Spaghetti, meatballs and garlic toast. The meatballs were home made with beef, pork, onions, garlic, milky bread, flat leaf parsley, Gabriel Cheese, oregano, egg, chill peppers, salt and pepper. The garlic toast was made from using French bread, Kerrygold butter and garlic toasted outside on the grill/BBQ. All washed down with a nice Italian wine.

Day 41

We have broadband so back on line.   I ordered DSL from Vodafone and it took them about seven days to setup the landline, light up the DSL and ship me a router.  You have quite a lot of options here for broadband and all the providers offer bandwidths up to and over 24Mbits which is quite impressive.  Sky is here on Monday installing a new dish and getting Tivo and HD setup and I am betting on my USA TV working with the Sky receiver.  We will see!

In last week we have doing all the mundane administrative type things you need to like applying for PPS numbers for the girls, getting Irish driving licenses, organizing trash collections, etc.. so still nothing that exciting to report.  We did go into Cork city on Wednesday and met up with Ashling at the Long Valley Pub for their famous sandwiches.  After lunch we headed to the English Market and found some really good Italian sausages and Irish Parmesan cheese (Gabriel) from Schull. The cheese seller also had some great aged Italian Parmigianino Reggiano but after some very detailed tastings and samplings the Irish came out on top!  That evening we had a feast of our famous marinara with the sausage and cheese and probably the best meal since arriving.

So that’s all to report. We are settling in nicely.  Some more recent pictures follow…