When you are married with kids of a certain age range you do certain stuff. The same sort of stuff whether you live in Portland, Chicago or Maynooth. You work (in our case this is just Rob), you care for a house, you cook, clean up what you cooked, do laundry, shop and take kids to school and their activities. Here in Maynooth the activities are different, the stores we shop in are new and laundry is really different (see previous posts), but the effect is the same. Right now Rob and Jack are at a GAA challenge match (instead of soccer) and Audrey and I are at church choir practice.
Sometimes I get really frustrated that we aren't out traveling every spare moment. But that's not realistic. We are a family living in a series of communities- school, work, town and parish. We could choose to spend all of our weekends traveling, but then we are not part of our community. And kids need community. We are trying to strike a balance. Taking advantage of our location and seeing the beauty all around us, and living in our new Irish home. So, we are seeing a bit less of Europe than I expected so far, but we are learning more about what it means to live in Ireland. On most days I would say its a fair trade.
