traveloehrs

“Windshields“

Our 2 weeks in Ireland included lots of time in the car. We would take in the sights along the way and would also make random stops at places we thought looked interesting. Lianne and I preferred castles, waterfalls and vistas. Junebug loved looking for animals and flowers. Lennox loved looking for tractors, heavy machinery, and windmills. He would get super excited and scream out all our names whenever one came into his vision. Our favorite alert from Lennox was for windmills…”Look dada, I see some “windshields” up there!!” So now, windmills are windshields to us.

The Dreadmill

We stayed at a small upstairs apartment out in the Mounthall countryside. There were sheep, cows, rabbits, an entire room of kid’s toys and a workout room. Junebug loved the treadmill or as she called it “the dreadmill”. I think dreadmill is a more appropriate name for this terrible piece of equipment. She would run on it multiple times every day to burn off her excess energy, but it still wasn’t enough to wear down her boundless enthusiasm. Lianne and I would get a little chuckle every time she told us “It’s time for me to run on the dreadmill!!”

Laundry Day

After re-wearing most of our clothes a few times, we had a ton of dirty laundry. Many places in the Irish countryside have a washer but no dryer for laundry. We spent one afternoon doing multiple loads in the washer and hanging them on the line. The kids were enamored with this process and had to buzz around like bugs the entire time. “This is so weird to dry clothes like this,” Junebug told me as I was hanging clothes. I let her know that growing up this is how we did laundry until I was much older than her and followed up with “And you know what else?!? On road trips we didn’t have iPads either!” She looked at me in disbelief and thought about it for a moment before replaying, “It must have been a long time ago.”

Wee Bit

The Irish way of speaking English is one of my favorites. Sometimes it is also difficult to understand for us Yankees. There are a lot of phrases that really tickled my brain too. Perhaps my favorite Irish adjective is “wee”. It means little or small amount. Not a day went by that we did not hear it. “You have the wee ones with ya I see.” “You have a wee stay with us…only 2 nights.” “He’s just a wee lad.” “It’s a wee bit cold today.” We would all use the word “wee” whenever possible and would have a “wee” laugh whenever we heard it in our daily travels. The kids got in on the fun and using it can still get a smile from them.