A week late...

What a busy week! I won't bore y'all with the details, let's just say it all passed in a blur of school uniform, labels, new text books and plastic covers. At least I got to run around chasing a little ball around the hockey field on Friday evening, knowing full well that the reward was probably a drink at the bar, bliss.
I also had my first fall, a wonderful roll and tumble skid sort of thing that had me sprawled at the feet of the opposing team’s goal keeper. Thank goodness I was playing in tracksuit pants... slightly bruised ego and very sore knee. Of course the pain in the knee only made itself known when I awoke on Saturday morning but I was actually pleased about that because I wasn't hobbling around on the astro!

Jessica went out for dinner with her friends on Friday night, a farewell kind of thing and afterwards they all walked back to our place. Luckily I was home when they all arrived; I think Malcolm was doing the lesser known wife come home dance with his sticks around the fire. Unfortunately I had just got out of the shower, the temptation was very strong to embarrass the favourite oldest daughter and greet all her friends in my headpiece and strapless, just out of the shower number but common sense prevailed even though it was a matching towel set. After all Jessica had given me the speech before she went out about how not to embarrass your 14 year old. Her biggest worry was that I would “give out to her” in front of her friends, me???

Well I think we passed the test and slowly but surely they all trickled off home until there were two. Then out came THE expected question… “Please can they sleep?” Luckily we were prepared for it and had already decided that two was a manageable number so we sent all manner of linen up to the attic with a warning to Jess: “If you don’t want us to ‘give out’ to you, do not let us here you up there”.
On Saturday morning we made pancakes and the girls played Buzz followed by Monopoly and Cluedo. I absolutely loved having the extra bodies in the house, nothing beats watching the other personalities in your children come out to play when they are with their friends and they don’t know you’re looking. Jessica’s friends finally went home at about 18h00 and we made dinner and watched a movie with the kids.

Sunday was a day of ironing on clothing labels and covering text books in plastic and not much else, nice relaxed day to the end of a hectic week.

A good night's rest

Buying duvets and pillows in a foreign country in a hurry…..sucks! We have no clue as to what a good brand is, we could be merrily buying cheap quality and not even know it. I wanted to tear my hair out, the selection was poor and we did not know where else to go! The little I did know was not enough! The tog over here is the measure of how warm a duvet is, and I had seen some lovely duvets on the internet, a 2 in 1 scenario where there is a light one for summer a medium duvet for Spring and Autumn and you clip them together for Winter, fantastic! Little problem…where had I seen them?
Pillow talk…..now a pillow is very important for a good nights’ sleep don’t you think? Here again we had no clue as to what was good, bad or ugly, I did find some down pillows (good) so we bought one each and then got another “it looks nice” pillow (bad or ugly, will let you know) to try as well. We did our best and got duvets and pillows that we thought seemed okay, not a clip together good idea one…just a regular 10.5 tog duvet! My thinking is that if our house is centrally heated so we should not really get too cold…

I did manage to get lovely duvet covers on sale for all of us, so at least one of our 5 senses will be satisfied because our beds really do look great! And please note the heaters in all the rooms!!!!

Week ONE

- Malcolm got a job!
- We found a house.
The mind boggles at the speed at which things have happened. Malcolm had an interview set up for Wednesday at 10:00 with Post bank. He thought that the interview went quite well and was told that they would contact him in about a week. Excellent news, and as Malcolm was not in a hurry to start work things were going along swimmingly.
The plan was that he would start work in September, about the same time as the girls went back to school, this way he could have his feet up and enjoy being a man of leisure for a while. Alas this was not meant to be….he got a call back from Post Bank requesting a second interview the following day and was offered the position at that interview….to start on Monday 23 July!
At the same time as all this we were also looking for a place to stay, and believe me it was not all plain sailing, we saw some rubbish! Luckily amongst all this we had found a lovely 2 bedroom apartment in Booterstown, so if all else failed that was our fall back.
Then we saw the place I described in a previous posting and we signed a year lease! So having been in Dublin for a full 4 days Malcolm had found employment and we had a place to call home.

Where should we hang our hats?

I have to say that I was rather blase about finding a rental in Dublin. Having spent alot of time cruising a few property websites, mainly daft and my home to let, quietly confident would be a very modest phrase for my attitude to renting. My mornings were spent cruising the sites, making lists of possibilities, calling the agents for appointments only to discover that most of the places we could afford we did not want to live in! We took to checking out the place a day before the agent was taking us to view and cancelled a few appointments without even going inside. Then we found Booterstown Hall, it was only 2 bedrooms but both were double and the open plan lounge/dining room was refreshingly large with a wall of windows overlooking the sea and harbour. It was also very close to Jessica's school and our only negatives where 2 bedrooms and a busy road. We had found home. We decided to continue looking for a couple of days and the more we looked, the more we knew that Booterstown Hall would be our new address. I called the agent, Marjorie and she said that it was still available and she would be happy for us to sign a lease, but she was in the process of seeing a house that she thought we might like as it had 3 bedrooms. We decided to have one last look before signing our lease and set off on a wet Friday morning sans kids, Jessica was not feeling well at all ,so Kirstin volunteered to stay home with her. We were a little early so we drove around the neighbourhood which looks very neat and tidy, and had a look at the "latest possibility", our meeting point. It was okay, a small garden in the front but no grass just pebbles and a path. Marjorie arrived and took us through the house, a nice size lounge with glass doors leading into a large open plan dining room and beautiful kitchen, downstairs shower and toilet with wood laminate flooring throughout. Glass doors from the dining room open out to a little garden, again no grass, it is actually a parking space for the car with a bit of space for a bench and a Weber, I can see lots of pots overflowing with herbs and flowers.... Up the stairs to 3 bedrooms (one single, 2 double) all with lovely built in cupboards 2 bathrooms and a fantastic attic room, a place where the kids can chill and do homework or hang out with friends. We said we would take it, but we have not signed a lease yet so I do not want to get too excited, Marjorie has said that it is ours but I like it so much I would rather be cautious for now! This is where we would like to hang our hats!