This weekend

People always ask on a Friday, "so any plans for the weekend?" and I should really think of more imaginative responses, "yes we've booked ourselves away on a Fitness boot camp" or "we've got a few beauty therapists coming to the house to give us a 4-hand massage and our private chef will be cooking up a storm in the kitchen plus the grandparents begged to take their grandson ALL weekend..."  - but alas if I can just get 8 hours sleep and go for two snoozes during the day with my son then I'm doing well. So yes the routine response is - and probably will be for another 18 years - no plans really, just hoping to sleep and you? This past weekend was no different. Saturday saw the Sun blazing - so with factor 30 slathered all over we ventured out into the overgrown garden where the dandelions rules. It was so lovely to feel the heat and nap under a makeshift tent (read some old bed sheets hung from the corners of deck chairs) breathing in - no not icelandic ash - but the aroma of homemade lamb burgers cooking away on our €24.99  baby barbecue courtesy of the local Lidl. Throw in some corn on the cob for good measure and a delicious yogurt, mint and 5-spices sauce and you got yourself two very fuggy from lack of sleep but happy people. A 3-in-the-bed, two hour nap after lunch followed by the bizarre, quirky movie, The Men Who Stare At Goats and we collapsed into bed at 10pm ....zzzzzz Saturday over.

Feeling adventurous on Sunday, we decided to leave the confines of home and head out to try an Italian restaurant, Don Mimis, which I'd spotted on a walk home with Louis. It had one of those round 'Recommended-by-someone' signs outside and when I did a bit of recon on the web - a rave review in The Sunday Tribune encouraged us further to give it a try.

One word - GHASTLY!!! This place would give Fawlty Towers a run for its money....We were greeted by a boisterous Italian who directed us to climb the stairs to the upper dining area....it felt a bit like stealing around someones flat, a makeshift table housed tomato ketchup and chilli oil, we had to try a few doors (always terrified that we might walk in on a sleeping flatmate) but we eventually followed the sound of a radio which led us into a bizarre room which housed 3 tables (the main table in the center was crowded with dirty plates, coke cans and plastic cups)....the look on my 6 month old sons face was priceless - he was saying "run"...but we thought sure maybe the food is amazing and it makes up for the decor...Despite being the only people there - the chef/waiter completely ignored the dirty plates (for the full hour we were there) and we ordered simple pizzas - what could go wrong? Two greasy pizzas arrived 30 minutes later, missing half the toppings listed on the menu, soggy starchy dough and genuinely disgusting. When we finally did manage to escape we both came to the conclusion that it was perhaps the worst restaurant we've ever eaten in. So you have been warned! Perhaps there has been a change of management, or maybe the chef was out sick - but I would avoid it like the plague!

A brisk walk down the east pier in Dun Laoghaire managed to quell the queasy feeling in our stomachs and revived our spirits, saving the day from being a total write off! Back home we treated ourselves to another film, Frozen River (Two movies in one weekend - wahehhh!!)  - brilliant if a bit slow and oddly reassuring. We both sat in bed exhausted but happy that we weren't caught up in human trafficking, facing jail and/or living in a trailer surrounded by snow with the tv hire company threatening to take our tv if we didn't pay by 4pm...we thought, dodgy pizzas aside, our life isn't too bad after all!