After our total success on Day 1 and our trip to Glendalough, I faced Day 2 with a lot of optimism!
What should we do? Well, the weather was still a bit unsettled yesterday and Dad said he had some time to join us in the morning, so I decided we would do something we love doing as a family: going out for breakfast to one of those beautiful cafes in Dublin. But... where?
Well, it's mid term break and I'm taking almost all the decisions, so I let the kids take this one: choosing one cafe to go for breakfast.
They discussed...at first they did not agree, then they came up with a shortlist of three or four and I asked them to narrow it down to a final choice and after some negotiations, they gave me a name...
Can you believe it??? Their favourite place to go for breakfast is IKEA!
While for most of us IKEA it a giant furniture store which happens to have a cafe for its customers, for my kids, it's a GRRRREAT cafe which happens to sell sweets! ha ha ha ha. This is the best example ever of how the same reality seen by different people can have so different meanings.
So we got there and they rushed to get a tray trolley, analyzing each and every item on the different shelves @ the self service area and enjoying every minute of it.
We ordered and then paid. I have to say the price is fantastic; we payed an amazing 16 EUR for everything we ordered (in the picture + 2 coffees) aaand it would be even cheaper if we had the Family Card, which we're thinking of getting, by the way, knowing now that for our kids, this place deserves at least a couple of Michelin stars!
So after our deep immersion into the fabulous world of top gastronomy, and also after a quick walk through the IKEA store (to buy a couple of things we liked), we headed back home. Our afternoon was filled with activities:
First, Herbert Park: a ball and lots of energy to burn - the park is the perfect place to burn energy with the kids: it's fun and it's free!!! Unfortunately it's closed at 5 pm in the winter, so we were back home at approx 6pm.
6pm - perfect timing for my next activity... THE CHALLENGE.
Both kids were asking me if they could play a video game, so I made a deal with them - if they wanted to play a little bit, they would have to pass THE CHALLENGE, which would be.... drawing the Solar System: all planets, with their names included, and getting to know something about it.
First reaction: "oh no! that is very difficult! We do not have the information, blah, blah, blah". But Dad and I were firm: no challenge passed, no video game, and their minds started working.
First, they googled it and got some very good pictures of the Solar System, that they could copy on the paper I had given them.
Then they searched in Youtube for a video which could provide some information about the planets, and they found this:
Learnt the lyrics of the song and they were ready for the test. Failed the first time, so I gave them some extra minutes to go through the song again and prepared some more questions for them. They easily passed the second time!
After dinner, at approx 8:30h, I let them play for half an hour. They went to bed very happy, after a day full of activities of all kinds, discussing whether Pluto should be considered part of the Solar System or not.... music to my ears!!!
Plan 2 was another success. One step at a time. Let's see what tomorrow brings
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