Ireland! (Part One)

Finally! This is the post I've been waiting for. Unfortunately, it would take multiple posts and A LOT of time to really tell all the stories I want to share from this trip. Maybe when I get caught up on this blog, I can do a detailed day-by-day account. But for now, I'm going to limit myself to a couple posts and not too many pictures. To look through more pictures from our awesome trip, go here.

Day 1/2 - Traveling and Dublin

After an exhausting day of long flights, insane lines, and crazy traffic, we made it to the Davenport Hotel in Dublin. All we wanted to do was sleep, but we fought our jet lag and set off to explore. We strolled down Grafton Street, at lunch at a cute café, and then went straight back to our hotel to nap. We forced ourselves to venture back out to see St. Stephen's Green, and to grab some food. However, I'm embarrassed to say that we were still so exhausted from our travels that we ended up at Pizza Dog, an American-styled pizza and hot dog place. But good food is good food, and it allowed us to get back to bed at an early hour!

Day 3 - Dublin

We finally felt like normal humans again, so we were ready for a full day of checking out Dublin. It was overcast and chilly, basically exactly what I'd always imagined Ireland to be. We started with a stroll through

Anyway, we had an amazing time on our trip.

Spring stuff!

To be perfectly honest, I'm getting a little angry at myself. I hate that I'm so behind on posting, and it feels like I will never catch up. I have so many fun things that have happened - and they just keep happening! And as long as fun things keep happening, I will keep falling further behind on posting.

Oh, well. Just keep swimming, just keep swimming...

So... a long, long time ago... these things happened:

• My awesome niece was chosen as one of eight finalists to perform at a music competition for Denver's Bringing Back the Arts Initiative. She was crazy sick, but she was still ridiculously awesome!

• Matt's folks came to visit a while back, and they brought a boat! We took it out on the lake to do a little fishing, and then made our way up to Rocky Mountain National Park for a nice hike.

We're on a boat!

RMNP is one of my favorite places ever. So pretty.

• Our little town is certainly not the quaint community that I often long for, but we do have the occasional festival that makes me enjoy (or at least better tolerate) where we live. Thorntonfest is the biggest of these celebrations. It's no Arkalalah, but they had some yummy food, fun vendors for the kids, and an awesome dog competition. And Belle and I held a giant snake!

Good, clean, family fun!

Wow. I think I may have made it through spring. Summer stuff to come... eventually!