Chill day ... then coffee day

Wednesday:

Trying to catch up on some must needed sleep. Mike let me sleep in for an extra 15 min which was nice :-)  I spent most of the morning trying to fix my phone...again with no luck. Need iTunes to re-download all my apps and stuff but since we don't have our computer yet I can't do that...have to think of other options I guess or just do like Mike said and wait until we are in NY to go to an apple store so they can look at it. Freaking Ireland doesn't have any apple stores here...even tho they have a plant here...wtf is that all about??  

So to make it worst, our sling box isn't working so I actually had to watch Irish TV!!!!! I didn't want to do it but didn't have many options. The TV shows are so funny to me...The first show that was on was a special about how to keep your pet cool in this heat wave. I just had to laugh because this weather is nothing compared to TX but I know it's way different for them here. I could only bare to watch that for about 5min before I wanted to shoot myself. Once the guy brought out the cool suit for the dogs and was talking about how good doggie TV is for entertaining the pets when they are home alone I had enough. Finally I settled on an old but goodie...The Fox & the Hound. I was glued and so was Shaun...hahaha. Good times. 

My afternoon play date with my new friend was canceled due to a sick kid :-(  So more chilling for me. I did get invited to a play group for Thu and another american mom emailed me about meeting up Thu too so that's exciting.  The sling box finally started working so I didn't have to kill myself...sweet!  Our evening was just as quite, both of us are pooped for some reason...oh well...but it's nice to just chill sometimes. 

For dinner I made lamb chops for the first time ever. They came out ok, but a little on the rare side. We like them med rare usually but I would say these were about 1 min under...surprisingly not too bad tho. I tried to make a wine reduction from memory and that's not a good idea...hahaha...I'll use a little more guidance next time (I didn't even put it on the plate...hahaha). I'm enjoying my cooking adventures. Usually we stick to the things we are comfortable cooking but figured I would explain our recipe list while we are here. I'm prepared to have some bad dishes...it's all part if the experience. Good thing Mike's fairly willing to endure my experiments. 

Thursday:

Good thing I went to bed early yesterday because Shaun was up bright and early at 5:30....yikes. He must be exited for this mornings play group. Before we began our day I got to txt with my stylist for a while, he is so worried about me and my hair...love and miss him!  This is a sore subject, not many options for me here but I'll figure it out. One of those little things you take for granted sometimes. So we make it to the coffee morning on time...even early...and met a few moms. Apparently this group meets every week for coffee and cake at a different house each time. That's a actually a sweet deal. Looks like most of the moms host it at their house about 2-3x a year then the rest of the time they just go to that weeks hosts house. Anyway, I wasn't exactly sure how that all went so I had my normal breakfast before I got there and didn't realize three was going to be so much food. This weeks host had tons of scones, cakes, bread and fruit...not to mention a cheesecake!!!! It was super nice. Anyway, I got to chat it up with the few moms that were there, 5. And crazy enough there was another Sean Michael, I couldn't believe it. I figured we would run into a few dozen Sean's but wasn't expecting Sean Michael...pretty cool. This kid was about a yr older tho...how crazy. And hia mom is a writer im the local mews paper and she wants to do a write up on us moving to Cork...we are going to be famous!!! Hahaha. Anyway, apparently these gatherings can get quite massive with sometimes 18 adults plus countless kids (18+ I'm sure). That's insane!!! Well I'm glad that this weeks group was a little smaller because it gave me a chance to talk to each one individually. I think Lino will definitely like this because each house will have new toys for him to destroy and other boys he can add to his gang :-)  But really, even if I only go a few times a month it's a sweet deal...I'm liking it so far. I cant wait to host one at our house...I'm not going to be as good of a host but it will be like a party to me so it will be fun. So I spent about 3hrs chatting it up then headed to the farmers market at Mahon Pt. I had heard about it and everyone said it was nice so I figured what the hey. 

 I got there no problem and with no GPS, even tho I'm sure I took the long route I went the way I knew to see if I could make it and I did...it's harder than it sounds. But the market was pretty cool. Not too big and not too small. It seems like its more of an eating venue to me tho. There were like 7 places to eat and maybe 17 different booths, total, that includes the food places. They had super thin crust brick oven pizzas (looked amazing), gyro like sandwhich, steak sandwhich, indian (there was a long line for this so must have been good), Veg salad (couscous, spelt & garbanzo beans), crepes and pot pies. I wasn't sure what it was going to be like but that just gave me a chuckle. I have to make sure to come back here when I'm hungry. But the issue with that is that it's on the same day as the coffee mornings so I know I'm going to be stuffed from that...oh the dilemmas...maybe I'll just eat at both :-0 I'm such a fatty. But anyho, walked around and didn't see anything that I had to get, but I think that's just because I've been going down to the English Market almost every day and they have almost the same things. They did have a small fish section but the selection didn't look too great and I think I would just prefer to go to O'Connell's anyway. But otherwise, when we move to our house this will be a good one to go to for veggies and some other little nick nacks like bread, cheese, sun dried tomatoes, olive bar and scones. One thing that they had that I wanted to try but couldn't because they were sold out was homemade savory pot pies. They looked so good, little individual pies filled with goodness...chorizo, potato, mushrooms, spinach, ham, etc. the one that I wanted was all sold out so I know they are good. I'll have to make sure to get there earlier next time to make sure I can get one. The other plus side to the market is that it's at the mall/grocery store and in the mall is a nice little play area for the kids!!! So another place I can multitask at...do a little shopping then meet up with a friend to let the kids play in the play area while we have more scones and coffee!!! I think I'm going to end up gaining weight while I'm here if I keep that up! Cool place, can't wait to take the hubby & Lino there...

So on my way out I had to take this picture because it was crazy to me. All my Dannon friends can understand...and use if for there safety contact if they would like. But anyway, these people are nuts and sometimes not very safe...at least not to me. This man was driving a lift and had some sort of trash bin on his forks. So he lifts up his load and starts to turn around and takes the load right over the man standing by the safety gate!! I about recked, I was like "be careful!!!! that thing could fall on the guy and kill him!!!" All this I said in my head as I was pulling out my phone to take a picture while I was driving in traffic with Shaun in the back seat!!!! All very dangerous but I was willing to sacrifice a little bit of my safety for the sake of the blog and a good pic...who does that??? The point of the story is, be safe! And when you are a witness to unsafe acts don't make yourself into one too trying to get a picture. 

Next was to the apt so that we could take a walk down to the city center to get some monk fish!! Today is the big concert here so I wasn't sure if I was going to have time to go get the fish before Mike was ready to get off but I was saved because one of his co-workers volunteered to being him home which was nice. "The concert of your life" started at 7pm or something and was being held near the city center so we knew traffic was going to be mad crazy with Irish people trying to see "The Boss". I'll explain more later... So I had enough time which was nice because its been a few days since I walked to the city center. I guess everyone is gearing up for this weekend street performance festival because there were a bunch of people performing today. A man in a straight jacket trying to escape, a guy singing horribly while playing the guitar and a painter or something. It was busy. So I got my monkfish but I have to say its not a poor mans anything. Cousin Nic said that Monkfish was like the poor mans lobster but I beg to differ...that one tail was like €14!!! That's almost $20 for 6 little medallions...poor people can't afford that Nic...we buy catfish at $1.99/lb and put garlic butter on it and call it lobster and maybe have some shrimp on the side to make it really fancy. Hahaha...anyway I wasn't expecting it to be that much but it wasn't really that bad. So I get all the things I think I need for dinner and head back to the apt. On the way back you can tell everyone is starting to come to town in prep for the party. I wish you could have seen the massive amount of people getting off the train station...it was like a million Irish men/women! Everyone was so happy and had a pep in their step...heading to the concert. Some of the people were just crazy, someone honked their horn to get by and then everyone was honking their horns. People down the adjacent street were honking just to be funny...did I say these people were crazy...I was dying laughing. So this concert, The Boss...the concert of your life...it was Bruce Springsteen! They go mad over him apparently I mean MAD!!! One of the moms told me that there were going to be over 40K people at this concert, that's pretty massive for Cork. It's bigger than one of the Gaelic sporting events. So that's why we were worried about the traffic, all this people heading to the city at one time. I guess Bruce comes to Ireland 2-3x a year, he is so popular he can't just make one appearance.  Hilarious.

So I got to make my monkfish and I don't think it turned out too bad. I forgot to get lemon so I had to improvise and make a garlic butter sauce...it all worked. Now if I can only make veggies & pan fry without setting off the smoke alarm in the apt that would be grand!  At least 2x a week I seem to generate a little too much smoke and cause the smoke detectors to go off...between the crappy pots and pans that I have and me not being use to the heat settings I always seem to scorch the veggies...just a little...just enough to add flavor...hahahaha. It's bad and it makes me seem like a rookie cook but its not all my fault. Anyway, another successful dinner impossible..,

Shaun was so amazed by me drinking water from the bottle that he wanted to try too...it was too cute...I think he wanted to eat the bottle not drink the water. I tried to help him but he seemed pretty determined...silt kid. 

After dinner we sat out side for a while and enjoyed a bit of the concert. We could hear it retry clearly from inside our apt but Shuan wanted a little fresh air so we chilled out there...Shaun is tired in this pic...so is mommy. 

Sounds like Bruce is putting on one heck of a show...not sure how long it will last but it's past my bedtime...actually it's early but I have a busy morning ahead of me. I got an email from another mom wanting to meet up so I have a play date at the park tomorrow morning. I can't believe all these moms are contacting me (ok its only 3 moms but that's still a lot for me) to meet up...these people are just too kind.