Friday, April 8, 2011

Flashback Friday

As most of you know, my family is from Ireland and moved to America in 1994. Since the beginning of time in Ireland, I remember our "summer holidays" being a big deal! School would get out for the summer and we would literally be packed and in the car heading for the country immediately. We would spend THE ENTIRE summer down in the country and we wouldn't have a care in the world. My mam had been doing this her whole life with her parents, and so the tradition just sort of continued for us! We had a summer place and would call it home for the next 3 months. Included in this summer place, was a private access to the beach and up the road, through our friends land was another private access, but this one was to an actual private beach! I won't lie, it rocked!!! We would get up at the crack of dawn, pack a lunch and spend the whole day on the beach. My mam would even have us line up and do exercises as a family...glad we didn't own a video camera. haha.

In the nights, we would go into Gorey (town) because there was usually something fun going on. They had a summer fair, which had a music division and I remember us entering into the contest and singing on the huge stage, or going to The Tara Vale for their dance nights and all the kids that were there on vacation would get up and dance. Those summers are seriously some of my best memories from growing up! It was so awesome to get away from the city and just live a carefree life in the beautiful country. I'm so glad for these memories and experiences and hope to be able to create some kind of tradition with my own kids like this!

Here is a picture of Ballymoney Beach where we used to spend our summers ;)

4 comments:

  1. ah tear.....those were great times. Umm "shake it all over" who knew Ma had some zumba in her...hahah!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Aww sweet memories!! Takes me back to the good ol days of sand sandwiches drying our towels on tree branches and Scotts blonde curly hair haha. We were living the good life though ;) Maybe I will relive it in May and pretend Michael, Nick and Liam are Kim, Mandy and You bahahahahahahaha, Loves!!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I'll be Micheal, he's the cutest.....em, did I just type that. eek! Those were great memories for me too. I'm so glad we got to experience that, we were so lucky. The family exercises, were embarressing and remember when people would be walking along from Ballymoney Beach and mam would be telling us to keep going. Awkward....who knows though, we could have had a workout dvd called "Irish lassies at the beach." Ha Ha
    ~Mandy

    ReplyDelete