Just a Little Imagination

It's pretty much a given that a 18 month old and a 3 year old don't care a bit about nature or history and even castles get dull after you've explored a few.

I found an easy way to keep the girls occupied when they were getting a bit bored.

Ireland is filled with faeries, you see. Magical little creatures who live in the gardens and woodlands. They are beautiful, but quite shy. So shy, in fact, that they will hide before you see them. But faeries also want humans to know that they exist. So before they hide they leave a shiny coin (Euros are great for this and the 1 cent piece is tiny).

The faeries first came out while we were visiting Torc Waterfall outside Killarney.

But after the girls figured out what they were up to they found faeries everywhere- in gardens, at castles and even, once or twice, on the street outside pubs.

Luckily two sweet faeries over came their shyness and accompanied us home to Iowa. Here they are waiting on the girl's beds before we left Ireland:

The girls still ask to "play with" their faerie money daily and remember how much fun they had looking for faeries.

This is a very easy game to play no matter where you are. Every place seems to have a special creature that can hide coins and then come home with you to relive the memories.