Ireland/Northern Ireland

Ireland is such a beautiful place! The kids had a 3-day weekend so we took the opportunity to book a trip. Ireland was an easy choice because it's not too far and we got a great deal on airline tickets. Of course, the best deal and to make the most of our time meant taking the kids out of school an extra day. I don't like doing that, but how often will we get these opportunities?! We always make sure to add some history lessons into our trips anyway so it's not like they aren't learning something.

4 days really is not enough time for Ireland. At least, not for travelling around the entire island like we did! Craziness! I researched the major attractions I wanted to see and asked Derek to help me narrow it down. He said, nope! We're doing it all! So here's our adventure in a nutshell (lots of pics!)

We flew into Dublin and it took forever to get our rental car. Definitely hadn't anticipated it taking so long. Took a big chunk of our day. We finally got going and we quickly stopped at the Rock of Cashel, basically just to say we've seen it. Didn't go in or anything because getting the car rental had taken so long. It was under construction so not as pretty as it could be.

Then it was on to Killarney. Our first stop in Killarney was Murphy's Ice Cream shop.

Some of the BEST ice cream I have ever had. My favorite: Dingle Sea Salt ice cream. They take salt straight from the Dingle peninsula and use it in their ice cream! Delish!! We actually ended up having this here in Killarney and again in Dublin. The first time Derek and I shared a huge tub of different flavors. In Dublin, I got what they call a Mingle. I chose the Peanut Mingle because it had the Sea Salt ice cream in it......it was AMAZING!

The next plan on our list was to stop off at the Muckross House and Gardens just to walk around and have a picnic lunch etc. We ended up stopping off for our picnic items earlier in the day and just ate it at a nearby playground. The kids were ready to burn off some energy. So we didn't have time for this. We still stopped off at Torc Waterfall, which was sooo crowded. Couldn't really get a good pic of the waterfall.

Again, the kids were ready to get out of the car (we ended up spending ALOT of time in the car this trip). They had fun hiking around.

Then it was off to the Gap of Dunloe. The highlight of the day for me. The pictures won't do it justice. It's just a drive....but a gorgeous one! Actually, I wasn't certain we'd be able to drive it. In all of the guide books it says you can't. You either have to hike it or horseback ride or take a jaunting car. I had thought about the jaunting cart because I thought the kids might enjoy it. It would have been 20 euro a person to ride though! And.....you have to get out and walk on the steep parts. After doing more research I found that it is actually a public road and you can drive it. It's a one lane road essentially though and the jaunters don't like to share the road. We ended up going the opposite way that most people go when experiencing the Gap of Dunloe and started our journey at 4pm which is about the time the jaunters start heading home. It ended up working out perfectly. We didn't run into a single jaunter and hardly any other cars either.

To get to the Gap of Dunloe we had to drive a bit of the Ring of Kerry route. Here is "Ladies View".

And the best views of the "Gap"

This pretty much sums up our drive. Pulling over every 100-200 yards for me to take a pic! Just imagine the kids rolling their eyes and saying "Not again!" Pretty boring for them since they don't quite appreciate scenery yet. I had to get a pic of the car though because whenever we go somewhere and rent a car we always place bets on what color car we are going to get. The only rule is no one can guess the same color so if you have a certain color in mind you have to be fast! I don't remember what everyone picked......your typical rental car colors: black, silver. Avery was the last one to pick and she picked red! There was one red car in the rental car parking lot and we all went crazy with excitement when the keys unlocked that one red car! :)

From there we drove a short distance to Castlemaine, where our rental home was. We stopped at a local pub first for dinner. The food was delish!

Then onto the home! This is the kids most favorite thing about our trips. The homes/hotels we stay in! They love exploring new places and especially love places like this that really peak their curiosity.

The kids were not ready to leave this house, but we were off for Day 2 adventures. 1st stop: Bunratty Castle & Folk park. The kids all agreed this was their favorite thing. It's set up like the villages would have been way back when. Had all the buildings that they could walk through. Some of them had ladies inside making bread and apple pies. I think there are supposed to be other people out and about to. I was surprised that they were the only ones we saw and we were even there on a Saturday. They did have a HUGE event going on there the next day so maybe they were just trying to prepare for that. We pretty much had the place to ourselves.

They thought it was cool.....and weird that there were separate school rooms for boys and girls.

Then we were off to the Cliffs of Moher. We ran into some traffic on the way. There was some sort of Truck Race going on and it was right along our path. :( It ate up a huge part of our day because not only did we get stuck on the way to the cliffs......we got stuck leaving too!

We decided to skip parking at the popular visitors center car park and drove down the road a ways and just found a place to park for free along the road. :) This picture doesn't do what we saw justice. We started walking off towards the path to the cliffs and saw this majestic looking horse standing at the top!

Making our way back to the car.

Thirsty boy!

And then we had a loooong drive to our hotel. (almost 5 hours!)

Our hotel was in Letterkenny. It was a fancy place. We got in really late, but were up early and had a nice breakfast and then went swimming in the pool. The kids loved it and have been asking to go swimming for quite some time now.....happy to take time out of our exploring to do something more up their alley.

"Kiweed!"

Then we were off to Northern Ireland. This was the part of the trip I was looking most forward to and it was my favorite and Derek's too, I think. The kids all agreed that this was 2nd on their list of favorites, after Bunratty Castle.

Our first stop was Dunluce Castle. We didn't go inside, just explored around it.

 

I had to take a picture of this little cottage next door.......because, as always, it pretty much defines our trip. Kids always having to go wee! We pulled up here and Avery and Blake were going crazy because they had to go so bad.

Then we went to Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge. I didn't tell the kids anything about this place because I knew they would FREAK out! I was right. When they saw the pictures on the signs when we pulled up they were like, "Is that what we are doing? We are NOT doing that?!" They didn't really put up much of a fight though so I think they secretly thought it would be really cool. It was kinda scary walking across the bridge, but it was awesome too!

Can you tell Avery was begging to have her picture taken? Then Blake wanted to start posing too! "Look what I can do!!"

 

Maybe she didn't like it all that much???

When we came back up there was a car show going on. Blake was in car heaven! He picked his favorite car to get a picture with.

Our next stop was Giants Causeway. We all enjoyed our time here. The visitors center was really neat and had a lot of fun, hands-on things for the kids and they had the cutest movie showing a tale of how the causeway was formed. We watched it 4-5 times probably!

 

The kids all got an audio guide.......here they are sitting on the "Giant's Boot" listening to the story.

It was late afternoon when we got there. There were still quite a lot of people there. We were trying to hang around for people to thin out so we could get some family photos. It did then out, but it was still very hard to get pictures without people in them. It was also hard to get pictures with smiling children because guess what.......they had to wee.......

Then it was off to our house for the night. Another nice place.

Our last day started off getting some fun pictures in the Dark Hedges (made famous by the Game of Thrones).

Then it was off to Dublin to explore before our flight left that evening. There really wasn't anything that we HAD to do in Dublin so it was kind of nice and relaxing to just wander around.

 We started out with lunch. We just went into the first place we saw pretty much. We were the only ones there and almost left because that is never a good sign. So glad we didn't! It ended up being one of our favorite meals.

Hanging out around Dublin Castle

 

She is always wearing her pants like this, so we call her LL (for LL Cool J.) She was confused so Derek showed her a picture. I was constantly trying to sneak a pic of her and she was doing everything possible to keep me from doing it. Later she got made at me and said, "I can't wait until I have Facebook --- you'll have to face ME on the Facebook!"

We had gone into some random museum and the guy working there gave the kids these bookmarks. Again.....showing their love for dogs!

We found a playground and the kids were in heaven!

Avery doing her favorite thing....

 

Allie making new friends......

Finally got a good one of her!!!

This is when she said I was going to have to face her in a few years!

And some cool Dublin graffiti

Randomness

I am getting behind on blogging. I will get to our Ireland trip soon, but first wanted to share some other random photos from the past couple of months.....

So the story behind this......Allie and Avery both had lost/misplaced their wallets. Well, Avery found hers and we asked Allie to get hers. We knew it was still in the car from one of our little getaways....she went to get it and couldn't find it anywhere! So we decided to use this opportunity to talk to them about the importance of money and taking care of it. I'm sure we've had the talk before, but hoped that this might put things into perspective a little more. We then took all of their cash and put it into their savings accounts. We kept some out for them to spend, but put the cash in our wallets for the time being. Allie later brought us this paper with her thoughts on the situation!! :)

This boy could play with his cars ALL day! So, I decided to research ways to incorporate some learning into his favorite pastime.......

An Alphabet Car Park!! All of his cars have letters of the alphabet on them.....as well as each parking spot. He has to match them up. He's already got it down. Pretty soon I'll change the parking spots to lower case letters to make it a little more difficult. He loves it though! He is so proud of himself when he matches everything correctly.

The kids had dentist appointments. Blake's was at a different time than the girls so I was actually able to get a picture of him (actually Derek did!). He was a champ! Such a big boy!

Avery lost another tooth! I think she looks so stinkin' adorable!!

Blake feeding the ducks at the bus stop.

Blake reading me signs at the bus stop. "Dogs don't poop or it will be on fire!"

2 Favorite After School Activities

Walking their dogs......or tiger. Can you tell they really want a dog?!!?

Library. They have created a library in the girls room. Making their room even messier, but I suppose I can't get mad because at least they are reading. Allie has created labels for all of the books with call #'s and everything....signs, library cards, etc. She has such a love for reading......and I think it has been helping Avery develop a love for it too.

Allie seriously reads a book (or two) every day. She read this one overnight!

Therefore, she is already in the "100 Club" at school for the Reading Counts program. Her teacher announces every time Allie takes a quiz and how many points she has. Allie says it's so embarrassing because everyone starts clapping. Every time someone gets to 100 her teacher also buys them pizza/drink from Rugby's Too (a little place to eat next to the school). Her teacher said she is going to have to rob a bank or something to be able to afford all the pizza Allie is going to earn this year! ;)

Speaking of Allie's teacher. Allie absolutely loves her! They get along so well. They both have the same dry, sarcastic sense of humor. Their class won the Spirit Wear contest last week and guess who got to hold the trophy and Hedgie?! ;)

Derek's birthday was last Friday. He had to work late.......I think it was about midnight or after when he got home......and he has been working those kind of hours since then. We are actually supposed to be in Germany right now (we had flights and everything!) and were told that Derek couldn't take it off. I'm livid because it's no secret the people he works for/with have it out for him for whatever reason. I think they are jealous actually. They are so hurtful and say and do the most rude things and make up lies. It's so sad! Anyway, back to Derek's birthday. I made him this scrumptious apple snicker's pie. And we were able to go out to dinner last night at a favorite restaurant.

Update: Even more proof that Derek's leadership was just telling him he couldn't take off because they wanted to screw him over........yesterday his boss came up to him and said, "Derek, you've been working alot lately. Why don't you take a couple days off this weekend and go spend with your family?" Derek wanted to punch him!!! Are you serious? You made such a big deal about him not being able to take those days off and now you want him to take them off. Really?! So, Derek said........"No, you told me I need to be here so I'm going to be here." Well, guess who isn't at work today? Yep, Mr. Bossy Pants himself. He clearly just wanted Derek to stay home because he realized he was wrong and wasn't needed.......and neither was he so he wasn't going to be there and if he wasn't going to be there than Derek can't be there to see that he's not there either. Seriously the worst boss ever!

Also have to add something else in to make this post a little happier. A couple days ago Blake and I were having lunch. We were sitting across from one another and I was staring off into space. I snapped out of it and made eye contact with Blake and he was just looking at me smiling. I smiled back and he said, " My Mom is soooooo pretty. You're my baby forever!" He makes me melt!! <3 p="">