TLDR – horrible tasty food for the kids, Dad and Mila scooter park adventures, Parent date night, new scooter modification, and a bloody jacket; who done it?
Dad Dinner
Michelle and Kara went out to dinner at Jonny Foxes one night last week. That left me home with the kids. Not being in the mood to do much cooking I feed them a nearly perfect dad dinner of Nachos, popcorn, olives, and apples. I can happily report the kids ate all of it. I even had to refill the popcorn bowl once during the mass food consumption.
Dad and Mila Adventure
Saturday morning Mila and I went on a scooter ride through a park to Fitz cycles bike shop in an old church near Stillorgan village. Millfam is going to make an effort to make more videos this year. Mila and I figured we’d practice on our adventure. We took a bunch of video clips of the trip and stitched them together into a video we posted to the Happyplex.IE plex server.
We headed to the bike shop to order me a new bike to commute to work with. It’s about 35Km round trip with close to 400 meters of gain on the way home. I want an electric assist bike for those uphill rides coming home. Took the assist bike for a ride uphill and It was AMAZING!! Super excited for it to arrive in a few weeks and replace my lame manual bike.
At the park, Mila and I went for some zip line rides, spun in a bowl, and swung on the swings. It was pretty fun. Much better then the last time I was here with Maddex when it rained on us and we had to hide in the pipe. I was busy taking videos of everything and did not manage to capture too many pictures. Not simple to capture it all in multiple formats and still be involved in the moments of the adventure. – Going to be interesting working at videos this year creating a good habit and system.
Parents Date night
Saturday afternoon Kara offered to watch our kids for us for the evening providing us with a bit of a date night; Adult time with no kids, ok we’ll take it. We’re pretty simple when it comes to going out. We took the Luas into the city and walked around for a bit holding hands, exploring and talking. First stop of note was Chapters book store on Parnell street. We can report that we are totally in love with chapters, and will be back soon. It’s a massive two-story book store. Massive enough, and filled with enough books you cannot see the back of it from the front. Down stairs is all new books, up stairs is all used books. So many books! book smells, piles of books, seats to sit in and look through books – we’re in our happy place.
After the book store we walked about some more looking for a Pho restaurant for dinner. We walked down a few streets we’d never been done before and ended up in front of and then toured St. Mary’s Pro Cathedral across from the department of education. Love finding tremendous gorgeous buildings open for exploration.
We found the Pho place Michelle was leading us to, and it turned out we’d eaten there before, on our last date night. Not wanting to eat there again / wanting to try something new we walked to another pho place called Aobaba pho. Which turned out to be a tiny hall way sized restaurant with 3 tables and 2 bars along the walls. We ordered, waited a bit, and downed our food seated at one of the bars. I added way too much chili oil to mine. Lips, mouth, and guts were on FIRE; it was amazing. Glad I also ordered a blue berry smoothie with the liquid fire. Michelle ate about half of hers and was not feeling it. – We both miss Pho Than Brothers back home.
Walking back towards the river we found some stairs in a door leading down into to an underground international market with a full-sized polish grocery store in it. Like every product in the store was printed in Polish. They must have all been imported into the country from somewhere; Maybe poland? who knows. We also found a Brazilian grocery store and a number of restaurants down there. We’ll have to head back soon and eat food there. We had a fun relaxing night out exploring and eating. Was good for us to have some time together. The last week was crazy with me working, and Kara here. It felt like we hardly saw each other. – Missed you and stuff lover pants.
Child Carrier for the scooter
Me going back to work means Michelle has to start taking Roxi with her when she’s taking the kids to school. Poor Michelle would most likely have to give up riding the scooter to and from the school. Always wanting to make Michelle’s life simpler and better I did some looking for something to help. After some looking, I eventually found and purchased a child carrier to attach to the scooter. I was not sure if this thing would work or not, but for only 14 euro shipped, figured why not give it a try. You have to remove the deck tape from the scooter then stick the carrier directly to the deck. Only took about 10 minutes to install.
Other then Roxi not being able to sit still well, and it being a bit rougher to quick switch feet on the move the kid carrier works brilliantly. You have room for your feet on the deck, and room for a kid to stand and hang onto the handlebars.
Blood on the Jacket
Khalssei had a spill on her scooter this week and hit her lip on her scooter bell. Picking her up to comfort here I ended up with blood on my jacket. Took me a few days to notice and then a few more to clean it off.