ManicMammy's Blog

Reviews, news, family, wine and me

Running in Amsterdam

  One of the highlights of my year is definitely running the Amsterdam marathon in October. It had been 7 years since I had run that distance and I was apprehensive about doing it all again. For one reason or another there had not been many half marathons in Ireland that I had been able [...]

Welcome to the Aquadome

A couple of Sundays ago, we awoke to a rainy dull day in Bandon. So myself and 3 of the kids decided to hit the road to Tralee. We had been meaning to try out its Aquadome for ages so it seemed like the perfect opportunity to do so. To make a long story short, [...]

Once upon a time

Santy had some hits and some misses this Christmas but the Vtech Storio was definitely the surprise and biggest hit of them all. Fionn, who is 5 years old and in Junior Infants, has just started learning to read and he loves it. Santy brought him the Toy Story 3 ebook as he had recently [...]

Doodle bread

The arrival of snow in Bandon yesterday happily coincided with the delivery of a Doodle bread kit and some extra shapers from Rose. Many thanks.  The children and I were weary and cold after a morning outdoors so decided to make use of the kit and bake some bread without delay. Each small kit contains: [...]

Ribena on the go

Last week, much to the joy of my children, I received a few cartons of Ribena’s new Juiced Up! to try. I love blackcurrants and my kids are big fans of fruit juice. They really enjoyed both flavours of this juice. They thought it tasted great and was thirst quenching and refreshing. I was happy [...]

Galway bay half marathon

After the hills of Dingle, we decided our next run would be somewhere flat. A google search later, we settled on Galway bay’s “fast, flat, fun and very scenic” half marathon on October 2nd. I was looking forward to this run as I thought I’d find it much easier than Dingle. However, despite completing it [...]

Running up that hill

Saturday the 4th of September saw myself, my husband and a group of my siblings and pals take part in the Dingle half marathon. It was an early start on a Saturday morning. Luckily the holiday home we had rented for the weekend was a stone’s throw away from the start line. We ambled down [...]

Superb SuperSea Summer Camp

Oscar has just completed this summer camp and is raving about how good it was and how much he enjoyed it. It took place on Garrettstown beach. We were fortunate that the weather was relatively good this week and there were some waves. All equipment was supplied by the surf school. The children were kitted [...]

But how can they teach me to run faster? *

The beginning of the school summer holidays saw my middle three children eager to do something energetic. Some of their pals were doing the Bandon Athletic Club Summer Camp so that’s the activity they selected. It was held in the Bandon Grammar school grounds which was great as in addition to outdoor running track and [...]

Super Sugru Scissors Repair

This is a guest post from Oscar, our 11 year old son. He eagerly awaited the arrival of Sugru in our house as he had seen the demos on its website. He repaired a broken scissors handle with the wonder material. Now nothing is safe Take it away Osc: Today I did an experiment with [...]

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