Northern Ireland

In July, I went to visit Annaliese, who moved to Belfast last year.  I flew into Dublin in the Republic of Ireland, and took a 2 hour bus ride to Belfast in Northern Ireland.  I explained to my students, "One island, two countries, both Ireland.  Clear as mud, right?"  Annaliese and her husband met me at the bus station, and our adventures began.  

Aarron is a fabulous guide to the local sights.  After a quick rest, they took me out for a nice long walk, then we had dinner looking over the water.  When I got full, I tossed some of my fries to the seagulls.  

The next day, they took me sightseeing.  See the castle ruins?  That's Dunluce.  

Here I am at Dunluce Castle, which we explored.

We visited Giant's Causeway, the only UNESCO World Heritage Site in Northern Ireland.  

It's like a giant playground.

Notice the rusty look to the columns?  Aarron noticed that people have wedged coins into the rocks.  

Since Northern Ireland is a part of the UK, they have the same post boxes as England.  Each monarch has their own cypher.  This post box is from the time of Queen Victoria.  

This beauty is Marvin, the female neighbor cat.  

She is very friendly and affectionate.  It was nice to enjoy her company, as it meant I didn't miss Grumman as much as I usually do when I'm away.  

Another day, another castle!  This is Carrickfergus Castle.  

This is Giant's Ring (well, it's actually the tomb at the center of the ring, but you can see the henge behind it).  

We went out to dinner with Aarron's mum and gran.  It's nice to know Annaliese has sweet in-laws nearby.  The food was wonderful.  This is steak & Guinness pie and champ (mashed potatoes with scallions & such).  

One day I went to the Titanic museum while Annaliese worked.  

The ship was built in Belfast.  The museum is quite an experience!  

One of the lifejackets

Wallace Hartley's violin, from the band that played on while the ship went down.  

I had a nice fish & chips lunch at the cafeteria after Titanic.  



One morning, we wandered St. George's Market, which is dozens of little stalls with vendors selling food and goods.  I had a pastry and brought home a couple books to share with my students.  (I ended up flying home with 9 books altogether, and photos of several more to try and find at the library.)  

Annaliese took me to CS Lewis square.

Mr. Tumnus the faun

The White Witch

Aslan

The weather was lovely that morning.  

After the square, we went for brunch.  

I ate so well while I was with them!  This avocado toast was amazing.  

We also visited the botanic gardens, did a hop on hop off bus tour, and a couple more museums, but you get the idea.  I had a really nice visit with Annaliese.  When my time there was up, I bussed back to Dublin.  More to come!  

May/June/July

I feel like the blog is fizzling out.  Different season of life, I guess.  Here's some of what we've been up to.  

We have a gray cat in the neighborhood that has been coming around to visit.  I've been putting food out for him, because I find it so amusing to watch Grumman's little walnut brain be blown by the idea of another cat out there.  I leave the door open a couple inches when he is here, and they "high five" each other through it.  

We made it through the end of the school year, and all the end of school year events.  Certificates were passed out.  Songs were sung.  Parents applauded.  

This was taken in the Kaiser waiting room.  I had some weird eye issue when we finally limped across the End of School finish line.  Thankfully, after 3 weeks of prescription drops, it cleared up with no lasting repercussions.  

Here's Jack with a 3D printed airplane.  He's a full fledged grown up with his own car, his own church, and his own opinions, lol.  He even took his first solo vacation recently, road tripping to Idaho to visit family.  

And here's Jack flying a plane.  Again.  Different plane.  

He loves flying, and will hopefully be taking lessons at some point.  

Speaking of flying, in June, I flew to Colorado to see Sam and meet Nan, his fiancé.  They took me to the Denver Zoo.  If you look closely, you can see the elephant is about to chomp down on an entire bunch of celery that the staff member tossed at him.  

We saw lots of neat animals.  Their cream colored raccoons are adorable, but they were hard to photograph.  I think one was named Cashew.  

It was wonderful to see my boy.  And Nan makes him happy, which makes me happy.  

They're getting married next summer.  

This is a terrible picture of their dog, Pip.  He kept crawling in my lap and making himself right at home.  

This is one of their kitties.  They also have a gray kitty, but I can't get the photo to upload.  

It was a quick trip, but I'm so glad I went.  I love that my kids are interesting grown ups with active lives of their own; it's just hard to have them in 4 time zones sometimes.  

I discovered my own mini travel hack on this trip.  I used binder clips to keep my charger cords untangled in transit.  When I turned off the light in my hotel room, I realized there was a gap in the curtains, letting in a flood of light.  I used one of the binder clips to fasten them shut.  

At some point, I will write a post (or a few) about the next trip I took this summer.  

Calaveras Big Trees

We visited a state park with several families from our church.  

This was most of us, before our hike.  

An obligatory, "we were here" photo.  I got in the habit of taking pictures of the kids when we went somewhere, just in case I needed to be able to describe what they were last seen wearing.  

We had a lovely 2ish mile hike/walk through the giant sequoias and other evergreens.  We saw some very Big Trees indeed at this pleasant recreation area.  

There were trees you could walk through.  

We spotted wild strawberry plants, tiny waterfalls in a flowing stream, and even some snow in the very shady spot where snow plows had piled drifts.  

The weather was warm enough to be comfortable in short sleeves.  

And at the end of it, there was a little gift shop and museum (tiny museum).  I took this picture of the separating arrow for Hannah, since she was hanging out with the teens and wasn't with me in the museum.  Hannah is fascinated by weapons, so I thought she would appreciate this.  

Since the park was a couple hours away from where we live, we listened to a book.  Hannah and I are reading/rereading the Susan May Warren books in order this year, so we were listening to her The Heat Is On.  Watching my long suffering husband as he was subjected to Christian romance was quite amusing.  

Spring Break Road Trip - part 2

It's really time to clean photos off my phone.  Aside from there being 2,700+, it takes forever to find anything.  

This was taken at Harry & David.  The little souvenir boxes we're holding contain a chocolate and 2 cookies.  

Lunch out, visiting a friend I went to school with.

Covered bridge, pointing out local flora & fauna.

The alpaca ranch!

Even though it was raining, this was a fun outing.  The alpaca rancher was very knowledgeable and personable.  There's a small gift shop, with some lovely knitted and felted items made from alpaca fiber.  They also partner with a Peruvian co op, and I brought home a lovely shawl.  

Grammy's fan club

The hotel had a basketball court, and Katie was delighted to shoot some hoops one morning.

The science museum.  This was magnet play.

A giant book?  I might need to take a peek.  I read 2 books while we were gone, not counting this one.  

Swilling from a jeweled goblet in the storybook area.

Climbing wall outside the science museum

We all missed our cats so much we stopped at a local shelter to say hi to the Oregonian kitties.

"Seriously mom?  It's rainy!"  We stopped at a creamery and a couple of chocolate shops.  

Katie, rocking out with the statues.

Did I take a picture of the crosswalk painted with books outside the public library?  Yes.  Yes I did.  I also FaceTimed Jack to show me my bookcase at home so I could fill in the gaps from a series of books I have at home, while I was at a bookstore.  

Shakespeare night!  We saw Macbeth.  I had the girls read a junior version of it before the trip so they'd have the gist of the story going into it.  When we got to the theater, they had signs up for Jane Eyre coming this summer, and I sighed and wondered if I could drive back up to catch that.  (Probably not.  I wish it would come here, but looks like only Ashland and Dallas.)  

A bookstore called Bookmarks, with a sweet old Manx kitty, Callie.  

This book made us laugh.  "When you look like your passport photo, it's time to go home" right?  Actually we were having fun.  Lots and lots of fun.  

Eating and exploring and walking and learning and doing and reading and watching and being.  

This was the set for the play Clue.  

I've played the game, but I never watched the movie.  The play was hilarious, and we all enjoyed it very much.  Katie liked it better than Macbeth because it was funnier and easier to understand, language wise.  

On our way home, we did hit a bit of snow, but we weren't in it for long, and it wasn't enough to require chains.  Actually the scariest part of the drive was when it was pouring rain and a semi whooshed water at us as he passed us on a curve, and we were blinded for an instant.  

I'd hoped we could stop at Turtle Bay on the way home, but the weather was yucky, so it wouldn't have been worth it.  

We have 8 weeks of school left.  I'm looking forward to summer.  I'm planning to visit Annaliese in Northern Ireland.