Oh guess what- MORE flooding!

It absolutely poured down rain today, which just means more flooding down in the village. It took Gillian an extra 20 minutes to get home from school because she had to reroute herself a couple of times. I took pictures to show how bad the flooding is.. hopefully you can tell a little bit better from these pictures. Look for the tree line (which is where the water usually stops). Its only supposed to get worse because all the rain that has happened up in Kerry is supposed to be coming down the river towards us. They say its the worse flooding in this area in the current population's history. Tomorrow WAS supposed to be a dry day but now the forecast is calling for more rain. Its funny how differently I view rain now. I just kind of expect it rather than dread it like I used to.











In other news, I booked a flight to Brussels, Belgium today! I'll be going with five of the other au pairs. I'm really excited about the group because I find four of them very, very easy to get along with (theres a bit of a language barrier with the other one!) Apparently the Christmas market in Brussels is incredible- that was the main purpose of this trip. Flights were incredibly cheap. We're going the weekend before Christmas (Dec. 18th-20th). A girl I worked with at the Spa now lives in Belgium (but goes to school in the US), so hopefully she will be "home" for Christmas and I can meet up with her!

Flooding

Nothing too exciting happened this weekend. It was actually a really relaxing weekend filled with grocery shopping, visiting family friends, and lots of skyping (when it would work!). I felt well rested for the week ahead- it felt like the first time in a long time!

So, I hear schools were canceled because of flooding at home. I guess we Americans don't know how to handle the rain like they do here. I'm going to upload pictures of the River Blackwater that runs through Killavullen and massively flooded the area this weekend. Apparently it happens countless times during the winter (because its so wet). Luckily, there is a detour to avoid the road that gets completely covered.


This is the actual River Blackwater. Its hard to see, but you can tell how high the water is by the trees that are in the middle of the river.. they aren't usually that way!



This is usually a field- not a lake!



This is another shot of the same 'lake'. You can tell it is supposed to be grass by the small patch popping up to the left.

Dinosaurs and Boo Boos

Eoghan's 3rd birthday is coming up quickly, so the invitation assembly line has been set up and we've been hard at work putting them together. He's having a dinosaur birthday party. His cake is going to be 'a big green dinosaur with a really long neck'. His invitations are really cute- I will try to take a picture and post one. He painted the dinosaur green, Gill colored the "3" red, and I wrote the information on the inside. He hand delivered them yesterday to all his friends. Gillian won a raffle for a free puppet show birthday party, so she is inviting as many people as possible to take advantage of the puppet show. Because she's inviting so many kids that he doesn't know very well, shes asking for donations to a charity instead of presents (for those people that feel like they need to give him something). Eoghan and Katie were both premature so they spent numerous weeks in the Cork Neo Natal Unit. Shes going to set up a donation box on his birthday to collect money for the Neo Natal Unit.

The other day I burned my finger throwing trash into the fireplace. It left a small mark (nothing major, don't worry Mom) and Eoghan has been very curious about what happened. He's asked me about it every day since then. Today I said "Eoghan, do you think my boo boo looks better?" He started to lift up my shirt and I said "That's not where my boo boo is! Its here on my finger." And he said "No, your boob doesn't look better". Now I know why he was lifting up my shirt...!

Irish Back Roads

Friday afternoon we were able to visit Eoghan's cousins Ben and Charlie again. While I was in Scotland, Ben was diagnosed with legitimate swine flu so they have been in quarantine for two weeks now. It was fun to see the boys be reunited as they are so used to seeing each other a couple of times a week. That night Maren (one o the German au pairs) arranged for all the au pairs to meet up at the pub in the village. It was fun to see all of them again. I hadn't seen most of them (besides at boot camp) since my trip to Dublin.

Saturday, Maren drove several of us to Cork city to go shopping. We really got to experience Irish back roads. At one point, we hit a pothole that was so big I screamed. Maren and Elisa got out because they thought we had blown a tire- luckily we hadn't! Gillian picked me up from Cork because she was in the city anyway. On our way home we stopped in Blarney and visited 'Woolen Mills'. Its a great place to buy real Irish sweaters, blankets, etc. I'm hoping to go back and visit it before I leave- after all, its only about twenty minutes away!

Today has been gorgeous weather up until this point. Of course its starting to cloud up now though!

Gillian's friend Orla (who lives about two hours away) is now looking for an au pair for her two boys (ages 4 months and 18 months). She would need the au pair to start in January and work for a minimum of 6 months. If you know of anyone who would be interested, PLEASE let me know!! Then I could get you in touch with Orla. Also, Gillian will be looking for my replacement (kind of sad!) here pretty soon. Same deal- let me know if you are interested or know someone else who might be!

I Gotta Feeling

I don't know if I have mentioned this before, but somehow Eoghan has learned the words to the Black-Eyed Peas song, "I Gotta Feeling". Since he always acts for the camera as soon as I pull it out, I can't quite capture how funny his live dance is, but this was close enough. Katie has also learned to recognize when the song comes on- she starts bouncing up and down doing her own dance. It is always entertaining!

Winter Weather

Well, the true Irish winter weather has set in. And that means one minute its gorgeous (but cold) outside, and the second you turn your back its pouring down rain and the wind is howling. Its really pretty funny actually because you just never know when to expect a torrential downpour. It wasn't so funny yesterday when Eoghan, Katie, and I attempted to enjoy the dry spell and go for a walk. Needless to say, we got stuck in the rain! Luckily they are even more used to the rain than I am, so it didn't seem to bother them at all.

Katie has been teething really bad this week. She has been incredibly restless and hard to please. Her fever spiked at one point, but came down pretty quickly after that. On Tuesday she wanted to be held constantly- which isn't like her at all. It actually was really hard to manage with Eoghan running around asking for things. We're hoping her top two teeth will pop through any MINUTE now!

Today the power is supposed to go out from 10-2 here. I'm not sure what the electricity company is doing, but Gillian and Kieran figured it would be hard to feed and entertain the kids without electricity so we're going to Kieran's parents house for the day. It will be a nice way to give us all a change of scenery, so I'm looking forward to it!

An Irish Halloween

Forgot to mention yesterday how Halloween is not anything special here in comparison to home. Gill did a great job of decorating the house for Halloween, but we only got two groups of trick or treaters. There really aren't many young kids in the area- and the houses are so few and far between that you would have to drive house-to-house to go out trick or treating. Eoghan didn't dress up because the costumes scared him. Kieran set off fireworks (which also scared Eoghan!). Eoghan made Kieran go sit on the 'naughty step' for 'giving him a fright'. Then we went over to a family friends house and had an impromptu Halloween party there. It was fun, but nothing like the chaos at home!