soyandsodabread

A couple of weeks ago was our first residential and it was fantastic!  A residential is when Quaker Cottage takes one of its groups of families on a 3 day trip to Corrymeela near Giants Causeway for a retreat of sorts.  The moms and kids are separated during the day and do different activities from sand dune sliding to visiting Dun Luce Castle to making face masks, etc.  Breakfasts and dinners include everyone, though, and the moms and kids get to see each other during the evening hours if they want to.  Unfortunately, we don’t have the resources to bring dads, so they have to stay home…dads rarely get to do the fun stuff, sorry 😛  Overall, it is a great time for the moms to take a break and reflect on how far they have come and/or where they are at now and let the kids have some fun and connect with one another as well.

Corrymeela

My personal favorite activities during residential were: the slippery water slide, plastering children’s faces to make masks, sand dune sliding, hearing the moms scream during their night line (where you blind fold a group of people and lead them through an unfamiliar area while they hang onto a rope),  watching the wee ones have a ball going down a ginormous green slide, and night time chats with kids and moms.

Me on the slippery water slide.

Sand Dune

All fun aside, however, residential also reinforced my desire to not have children for at least 10 more years.  I was exhausted being with kids from 7:30am to 11pm!  I need to train for a marathon or something before I have children to build up some more stamina.  But the nap on Friday afternoon when we got back was glorious 🙂

Moment of peaceful sand dune sliding before being asked to teach some of the younger girls how to squat...

It has been awhile since my last post.  Sorry!!! I’ll be doing some updates over the next couple of days and then try to post more regularly.

Today’s update is driving:

I am fully certified to drive the minibuses at this point.  I passed my driver’s safety test and have been learning a good number of bus runs.  The only bummer is that I only drive a minibus and live in a city.  If you have ever lived in a city you understand how horrendous parallel parking and small lanes can be.  Now imagine that you have twice as many blind spots and can barely see anything on your left side.  It’s ruff.

That said, I still have parking trouble and trouble getting one of the busses up the last curved incline of the mountain.  In fact, one of the busses is currently parked on that incline because it thought that it would be fun to stop running and roll backwards in first.  With no street lights and so many blind spots, I’ve had to park it there over night.  Hopefully Phil will be able to get it up the mountain tomorrow…

There are good things about driving, though.  Each time I do a bus run I learn a bit more about the layout of belfast and it is SUPER helpful with grocery shopping…haha.  Also, driving to pick up families is a tremendous help to a lot of the mothers and kids that come to Quakers.  It’s hard enough pushing down pride and asking for help, let alone worrying about finding a ride up a mountain.  I think that it is fantastic that Quakers gives this service to its families.

Thus, driving definitely has its pros and cons and my biggest cons have nothing to do with driving on the left side of the road.  However, the pros of driving definitely outweigh the cons.  Knowing my surroundings and helping out our families is a pleasure.  I’ve just got to get a hang of the last curve up the mountain 🙂