Halloween in Ireland

Halloween has been Scarlett’s absolute favourite times of the year since she has known what it was properly – starting out 3 years early when Joan was informed she would be dressing up as a Mummy, because she was her mummy and I was instructed I would be a pumpkin – ha ha. Since then we have been the Addams Family and Ghostbusters while the girls were space kitties one year as well. This year was no different and details of our Halloween outfits were issued early this year by Scarlett and Frankie. Scarlett was going as Clawdeen Wolf from Monster High, I was going as Draculaura’s Dad from Monster High, and then Mummy and Frankie would be witches – sorted.

I boarded my flight and headed to Ireland again with no real idea what I was dressing up as but that was all part of the craic.

Halloween in Ireland is something else, it is a full noise celebration with events all through the week culminating in parades and fireworks on the 31st itself – no surprise really seeing as Ireland is where Halloween originated … who knew? Certainly not me.

We had a brilliant week going to all sorts of Halloween events, the girls having new spooky outfits for each any every different place we went to. The highlights being the event organized by an amazing organization that has been looking out for and helping support Linda since Ernie’s passing out at the Lisbellaw Petting Zoo where we had an awesome night of slime making with an actual real life wizard, a spooky walk through the farm to the pumpkin patch and then rounding out the night carving our very own Halloween pumpkins and having a zombie disco – great craic.

Outside of the Halloween festivities the girls and I also had a really special daddy and daughters evening out where we went to the amazing Shauna at SHB Hair Nails and Beauty in Clogher for some Japanese head spa therapy for the girls and some general pampering. This was such a brilliant evening getting to spend time with them doing something they absolutely love, made all the better by Shauna and how brilliant she was with both of the girls. We will certainly be back to SH - they rock, and I cant recommend them highly enough

The main event of this trip though was heading up to Derry on the 31st for the huge Halloween celebrations that happen there every year. We all got our costume son a jumped in the car for the quick blast up the road. This trip was also extra cool because we were also meeting up with our friends Mark and Bridie and their two great kids Sienna and Caden in Derry. Mark is from Limavady and they just happened to be at home on a big holiday while we were all there too so that was great. Got some interesting looks rocking up to Starbucks just outside the city in our full get ups but hey its Halloween, I'm sure they’ve seen it all before.

The afternoon and evening in the walled city was so cool, loads of different activations, music and street performance all round the city centre with every single person, man woman or child, regardless of age we came across dressed up – so cool, and something you would just never see in NZ. We walked along the walls of the old city, stopped for a customary Guinness for us and bag of bacon fries and some orange juice for the kids. We rounded out the evening in the amazing Guildhall in the city centre watching a mini concert by a Zombie choir under the most incredible looking moon inside the place – hard to describe and do justice but hopefully the photo explains it better than I can.

The girls and I rounded out this trip back with ice cream and a visit to the cow shed at Tickety Moo. The girls were absolutely fascinated by the feeding shed, how the cows are lived and especially the back scratching machines for the cows, well Scarlett was at least – Frankies favourite part was squealing and pointing out everytime one of the cows took a wee or poohed on the floor – sums them up perfectly, ha ha.

No trip back to see everyone is complete without out traditional stay overnight in a “fancy” hotewol as the girls call it. We were booked into The Manor House and the girls were suitably impressed when we pulled up at the hotel that looked like a castle according to them. We swam in the pool, ate a lovely dinner in the cellar bar, had a few more pints of Guinness and just soaked up our last night together for another wee while. The next morning we dropped the girls off at school and then I was on a bus and on my way back to Saudi for one final push work wise before the end of the year and a well earned Christmas breakRead more