Summer Adventure

We were fortunate enough to spend an entire month in Ireland. This happened in May. It was a wonderful experience as a restful vacation, spiritual journey, and homeschool adventure. We stayed at various houses- one on many acres with cows and sheep as the neighbors, another on the Beara Peninsula in the south with low/high tide and mountains as neighbors, and another in County Mayo with a ruined abbey and the filming location of the Quiet Man  as neighbors.

Everything was a delight to the eye. The scenery has an ancient quality to it. The stories told are close to our hearts: Catholics who would die for the Faith, who were forced to leave their homeland in search for a better life, others who continued to stubbornly rebuild their churches, and those who organized protests and uprisings. This was the land of Saints and Scholars.

With this great vacation, though, came the necessity to put formal schooling on hold. This happened much earlier than I anticipated (a month before leaving as opposed to a week!), and we were already trying to cover extra ground to start at conventional school grade levels in the fall. Soooo, we are schooling through the summer- or trying to.

You may remember my mentioning my more laid back and flexible habits. I have a hard enough time keeping myself according to some semblance of order (as anyone who has seen my dresser can attest), but add a house, meals and children who need to be dressed, cleaned, fed and schooled-- I'll leave it there.

So, it would be no surprise that while were on our way to completing our second full week-- my husband's car broke down. On last Wednesday evening, I towed his car behind our mini van into town (WISH I had a picture of that!). So, I was without a car Tuesday and Wednesday. Car came back Thursday a.m., which ended up being a day off. This is because I had shopping to catch up on, a car repair for which to pay, a prenatal appointment to make, and a dog to visit the vet (he recently came down with an ear infection). We did this all on Thursday. And none of the stops were in the same town. According to my personality, I can't have Thursday off school and be expected to jump back in for one day on Friday. It goes against my very being! So, I did school research, and let the kids have another day off. Oh, yes, the car wouldn't stay running on Friday, so I was without my van again. Good thing is that the mechanics didn't charge for the towing and fix even though it had nothing to do with what they repaired previously!

So, our adventure involved map skills, the virtue of patience, behaving in a vet's waiting room and trying not to enjoy Culver's too much for lunch when mom and dad said we spent enough money eating out in Ireland to cover a year's budget at home!