Our Exciting Hols Come To An End!

☀️ Our Final Day in Ventosa Santa Bárbara: Pool Time, Cards & Looking Ahead to October

It’s a bit sad but our exciting hols in Portugal are coming to an end on a sunny note 🙂 This morning greeted us with 20°C at sunrise — probably the warmest it’s ever been on one of our holiday mornings. We wasted no time: early cool water swims, sunshine, and family games by the pool. Battle Ship, Dominoes, Cards, UNO — all laid out on the pool’s edge as laughter bounced over the tiles.

It’s a bittersweet day. We’ll miss this place — the private heated pool (an absolute must with three kids), the warm air, the quiet mornings, the freedom to rise and eat whenever. But at the same time, there’s excitement in the air. October awaits us back home, with new plans, new projects, and a fresh homeschool rhythm.

Our Week 6 planner will be ready mid-week, and it’s already whispering ideas of Halloween, autumn crafts, and spookier fun.

🎃 Halloween in Ireland: Ancient Roots & Modern Celebrations

Before we depart, I’ll leave you with some of my favourite stories and local events about Halloween back home in Ireland — perfect inspiration for your autumn homeschool planning.

Halloween in Ireland has deep roots in Samhain, the ancient Celtic festival marking the end of the harvest and the thinning boundary between the living and the spirit world. Bonfires, my son would love one of these costumes, (what do you think? I will share what we bought in the next posts closer to Halloween) feasting — all of that came from those early traditions.

Over time, Christian traditions merged with Samhain, giving us All Hallows’ Eve, All Saints’ Day, and more. In Irish homes, it’s common to bake barnbrack, a fruit cake with symbolic items (a ring, a coin, cloth) baked inside. The coin might mean wealth, the ring a future marriage, the cloth something less fortunate — you get the idea! Here’s more about our Irish Traditions

Trick-or-treat, costumes, jack-o’-lanterns — you guessed it: many of the Halloween traditions we know today come from Ireland.

📅 Halloween & Autumn Events Around Cavan

If you’ll be in Cavan during October, here are some family-friendly events worth keeping on the calendar:

• Tonagh Pumpkin Hollow, Mountnugent, Co. Cavan — October 25 & 26, 2025. A pumpkin patch, crafts, and cosy autumn fun. This is Cavan
• Little Pumpkin Monster Bash & Trick or Treat Trail in the Cavan region (October 25). This is Cavan
• Beary Scary Halloween Event, Cavan — mask making, bonfire, traditional games, dancing. bearessentials.ie
• Imperial Presents: The Ultimate Halloween Costume Party, Cavan — for older kids & families. https://ticketstop.ie

I’ll share more of these in the Week 6 planner so you and your homeschoolers can pick your favourites.

🧳 What’s Next

Tonight we pack. Tomorrow we fly. But today we soak up every last splash of sunshine, every laugh over cards, every quiet moment of gratitude for this beautiful setting.

We’ll miss this area of Portugal near Lourinha in a small town called Santa Bárbara (where the coffee is only 80c!!!) — its warm pool, its silence under starlit skies, its gentle rhythm. But we’re also eager to return home, take on October, and see how our autumn homeschool theme will evolve (hello Halloween crafts, leaf science, storytelling in the dark). If you are interested in our Holidays I will create a post just about where we have been, what we booked, flights, cost and all that jazz when back home! So please stay tuned!

Thank you for following along on this journey. Stay tuned for the Week 6 planner, and all the fall magic that comes next. And if you missed it, here was our week 5!

Until then — swim, laugh, rest, and keep your heart full.