“It takes a long time to grow young.”- Pablo Picasso

Tom's Birthday.  Great Day at Tayto Park with the kids and cake with our good friends.  Happy Birthday Honey!

"On the beach, you can live in bliss." Dennis Wilson

Today was the first day in a very long while when we could just get up and do as we wanted.  I slept in (until 9am!), then we all walked down to the village and had breakfast in one of our favorite cafes.  It looked like it was going to be a really nice day, so we decided to go to the beach.  We are so close to the sea, and I appreciate it so much.  We are definitely close to some beaches, but not the same kind of beaches that we know from the Northeast USA.

Firstly, there are few days that we would really consider "beach days".  People have been commenting lately about how warm the sea is now.  Freezing.  The sand is very gravel-ly and there are lots of rocks and stones on top, at least at the beaches nearby.  On this particular beautiful day, there was an unusual amount of seaweed, so there was a bit of an odor and a ton of flies.  I was sitting on my towel constantly flapping my arms so that they might stop landing on me.

In spite of all this, I loved it.  Why?  Because the boys loved it.  They had the sea, rocks to throw into it, friends that they knew from school, a big shovel and a beautiful day.  They couldn't have been happier. How lucky we are.

"Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

It has been close to a year since I have been on this blog.  Knowing that we have at least 1 year to go in Dublin, I want to try to record as much as I can going forward.  In just scanning past posts, I realize that I don't remember as much as I would have thought and I so appreciate the entries that I have made.

The absent year was our third and I will definitely be "backblogging" a bit so that the "highlights" of 2012 are not omitted!  This year the kiddos seemed to grow into big kids.  They are so busy with school, friends and activities that our day to day has become quite hectic.  We did some travel, they boys learned to read and we are playing a few rounds of "Go Fish" every night as a family.  Pretty good stuff.

Be back soon!