{"id":11696,"date":"2014-12-21T17:00:28","date_gmt":"2014-12-21T17:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/greensideup.ie\/?p=11696"},"modified":"2017-01-09T16:39:54","modified_gmt":"2017-01-09T16:39:54","slug":"christmas-past-roof-heads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/greensideup.ie\/christmas-past-roof-heads\/","title":{"rendered":"Christmas Past – A Roof Over Our Heads"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

\"Christmas<\/p>\n

My timeline is one of reminiscing this year and as I read Maggie from Foodborn & Bred\u2019s memories of a tiny knitted stocking<\/a> that hangs on her tree, my mind skips back eleven years ago to a time when our own children were small and life was quite different.<\/p>\n

\"Taking

Taking some Dad Time<\/p><\/div>\n

Instead of living in a cozy warm house Ian and I, along with our three children, two cats and a multitude of mice that were skittering around between the ceiling boards, were living in a damp, two roomed, mobile home in our front yard. We were renovating the old farmhouse sitting in front of us that we’d bought from our neighbour a couple of years before, our dogs sleeping in the shed until we had more space.<\/p>\n

Far from the six months that we\u2019d envisaged living in an aluminum box,\u00a0there was hope that we might be able to eat our first family Christmas dinner in our stone built kitchen a full 18 months later, and we were working ridiculous hours trying to achieve that.<\/p>\n

Our third child was conceived shortly after moving in to that caravan meaning that I was rearing three children under five in there with no running hot water.<\/p>\n

While we adults slept on the floor every night for 18 months, a mosses basket beside us for our new-born, our two youngest topped and tailed in a single bed. I cooked our family meals on the two ring cooker and in a tiny portable oven, but whenever there was a frost, the cold water and gas pipes froze making life even more challenging. As soon as temperatures began to drop, condensation began to trickle down the thin glass windows and for months we couldn’t see out of them without wiping them down.<\/p>\n

We had no bathroom inside so Mr G installed a toilet, a cold water hand basin and a ‘temporary’ shower in one of the outbuildings that in the end, became our bathroom for almost three years. The tank of the shower froze over too in the winter months – thank goodness for a kind friend who invited us around to her house to bathe every week.<\/p>\n