Ireland-Day 5 & 6 and the long journey home

When we started this blog we had the intention of writing a different post for every day. That way we wouldn't miss even the tiniest memory. Well..4 years later we still haven't finished it and now we have hardly any memories left. I guess Alzheimer sets in when you get to be our age. The 29th year of life is pretty tough on the pre-frontal cortex. (Ok, so maybe I have no idea where that even is... I'm guessing it's somewhere towards the front of the brain, and I have no idea what purpose it surveys, but I figure pretty much every part of your brain is pretty important... and it sounded right so I'm just going to go with that.) Anyway, now I'm just wasting time. Speaking of wasting... once we went on this trip to Ireland and you know, because it's surrounded by a body of water, which means anything goes. So... wasting..that's where I was going with this. We got wasted. Every day. And Every night. Which is probably why I can't remember much of these last 2 days. The alcohol became a part of us. We were nearly fully inculturated into the Irish ways. So basically you are just going to get a list, with a few extra details. 1. We went to the Rock of Cashel. Sounds like a pretty bad-A place right? We thought so too. Until we got there and it was just a big fancy old church. I don't remember much about it other than that Janae and I weren't super interested in the tour we were forced to go on. I hate tours. I'd rather just walk around at my own pace and maybe stop and read a few signs here and there. And for some reason we were not about to stand for that long. It's not like we had been walking all day long, this was the first activity of the day, maybe it was the $70 worth of chocolate weighing us down. It's hard to be fat. So Janae and I decided to sit for the whole tour. We'd find a nice little rock or wall to sit on or by and just chilled while the rest of the group stood. The awkward part was that we always seemed to pick a spot that was pertinent to the tour. So there we are, minding our own business, not at all paying attention to the tour guide, and next thing we know, he is point above or around or behind us and all eyes are on the two lazy Americans, who can't stand for 30 minutes. He started making a joke about it every time. We became part of the tour. How's that for inculturation? After the tour we split from the boys. Who knows where they went for lunch. We went to a cute little place where Michelle and Janae got Shepard's pie. Legit Shepard's pie from Ireland. It looked delish but it didn't look gluten free so I got a salad. Then we waited for the boys, which we often did. While we were waiting we saw this adorable Irish family. They had a bright red-headed son that just had his first communion and boy did they love him. I have never seen a kid get so much attention. So naturally we started creeping on him and taking pictures. Don't judge. We had to. For Scott's movie.

2. We headed to Killkenny Castle. We walked through this adorable little Irish town by an adorable little Irish river. The castle was huge and really cool but we don't remember much about that. I have vague memories about some kids doing some weird dance moves or par-core on the castle grounds. The details are vague. As Kanye says, I'll blame it on the alcohol. The inside was cool from what I remember, but yeah, like I said, memories are vague. There were lots of pictures of ladies in the castle. Like a huge gallery. Scott and Greg were trying to pick up on one of the tour guide ladies, trying to get her to say 33 and a 1/3..or as the Irish would say, terdy tree and a terd. She caught on to their childish games real quick. Dave was stuck with us again. Poor guy. Fortunately for him, we introduced him to the game "1 or 2?" Basically he had to choose which portrait woman he'd rather be with. (I believe "be with" is meant in the biblical sense. We try to Mormon up the game..lie to ourselves, make us think that we are deciding which dude we'd rather go to institute with, but let's be honest, that's not the point of the game.) Anyway, Dave was the only one who could play because they were all girls, but he sucked at the game. He refused to pick one or two. When we asked him, his response was always, "Jacqueline." So lame. He didn't even marry her so I bet he regrets missing out on all that fun.

3. Apparently we ate dinner by the castle, but we don't remember that. However, we do know enough about ourselves to confirm that we did in fact eat dinner. We probably washed it down with about $30 worth of chocolate. Day 6 New day, same rules. 1. We wanted an authentic Irish breakfast so that's what we set out to do. We learned very quickly that Irish people don't wake up as early as American's. Because they need more time to recover from their hangovers. If I remember correctly, breakfast wasn't served until 10am. Which is the same time McDonald's stops serving breakfast back here. Dave decided not to join us, so he just slept in the car while we ate. I mean, he had to get up real early for that 10am breakfast.

2. We needed to check out an Irish Mormon church while we were there. Which was uneventful. There were a few American families there so we weren't a novelty. What's the point of going to church in a foreign country if you don't get a lot of attention for it!? Fortunately for us, we went in jeans because we were still planning on doing a lot of site seeing that day. But, Michelle had to one-up us and wore a skirt. The members there thought we were so wicked. They thought Michelle was so righteous. I also remember that there were a lot of red-heads there. Scott took lots of pictures.

3. We went to some historical battle field place. Really, I remember very little about this place, but there was an incident. We'll call it "The Incident." At some point while we were taking pictures, Dave made a comment to Greg that was pretty offensive to him. But not offensive to anyone else in the world. Greg is just real sensitive. So Greg got pissed and stormed off. It took us forever and a day to find him which made us late to our next location. Stupid Greg. I was over it, but now that I remember it, I'm pissed all over again.

4. We tried to make it to the most ancient burial grounds ever. New Grange..but we got there after it was closed. Scott tried to sweet talk the worker to get us in but he failed. So we had to settle for pictures from a distance. We did find some cool little burial grounds a ways away (that were locked too) but in an area that we could roam around freely. Scott did a jig with the sheep. Then he chased the sheep. It was funny.

5. We made it to Trim Castle which apparently is also known as Killarney Castle which is apparently also known as the Braveheart Castle. It was cool and old and there were lots of tourists. We took a really cool roommate candid while we watched Scott charge down the hill straight toward some of the unsuspecting tourists. I'm sure there was more to that location but I don't remember.

6. We headed back to Dublin for the night so we could catch a flight early the next morning. Temple Bar, we were told, was the most happening place there. Lots of food and live entertainment. I was dying for Mexican food, which happens to be pretty rare in Ireland, but we lucked out and found a place. Michelle was being real frugal so she bought a pizza from a drug store and brought it into the restaurant with her. She was eventually kicked out of the restaurant with her food and ended up eating it on the steps outside while we enjoyed Irish-Max. Not to be confused with Tex-Max. She came back in while we finished up our meal and put her head on the table to sleep. She gets real grumpy late at night. We just roamed around the rest of the night without the boys... saw lots of live entertainment and finally saw a red-headed Irish man do an Irish jig.

7. We decided to get a hotel for the night so we could get a good rest but Dave and Greg didn't want to pay so they slept in the car. We offered to sneak them into the hotel room but they were too stressed about the possibility of someone finding out that they were sleeping on th3e floor, so it was just Scott, Janae, Michelle and I for the night. The long journey home I don't have much to say about the flight home, except that it was long and maybe 2 other things. The flight from Ireland to New York was uneventful. But things got hopping' when we got to JFK. There were birds in the terminal. That was weird. They just walked around while we waiting, 4 hours or so, if my memory serves me right. A funny thing happened, or not funny for the pilot of the Air France plane that collided with an American plane on the tarmac. We were stuck in our plane for well over an hour while that incident was taken care of. Glad to be part of history though. And this concludes our trip to Ireland. I am so proud that after 4 years we finally got it in the books.

I bet you thought we died.

I don't even know where to start. How do you blog about 3 years in a single post? I don't think it's possible. But if it is I should probably do that. We have neglected the personal matters of our life in the blog world for 3 years with the exception of a post or two. It has been over 3 years since Ireland. We vowed that we would not continue to blog about our lives (amazing as they are) (entertaining as they are) (splendid as they are) (and often sucky as they are) until our blogs about Ireland were complete. Well, basically that means we would disappear from the interwebs for the rest of our lives. Or at least until Janae gets her new laptop charger so we can have pictures for our Ireland blog. Stupid Janae. That's pretty much the only thing that has stopped me from blogging over the last 3 years. I can't wait to get back to it. So if you are ticked that there are no pictures on this blog, blame Janae. I guess the best way to summarize what we've been up to is to just forget about the first year after Ireland. That year was in Turnberry anyway so it didn't really matter. Pretty much the only thing that anyone talked to us about that year was our Ireland trip. Because they didn't know what else to talk to us about. It's like they had to talk to us because they wanted us to go to church...reactivation efforts ya know? But they knew nothing about us and didn't really care to know anything about us. So Ireland was about all they had to make that connection. So genuine those Turnberry people. Then there was Sandy, which of course we have blogged about. We got our new move in blog and may a few more. Let me just say that Sandy is the SHIZ. However, I suck at blogging about general happenings. It's boring for me and it's boring for you. (And by "you" I mean Janae...because I'm pretty sure you're the only one who is going to read this). So, I'm going to choose a single event that I think will best entertain me and you. This event has impacted my life more than you dating Scott or me dating one of my many Tinder, POF or OKCupid guys. This event out does me planning my life with Sam only to find out he's a big fat liar, all in the same month. This event has brought me more stress than the 7 million interpreting tests I've failed and the complete lack of planning on consideration Tony has for my life. This event occurred in a Riverbend YSA sunday school room today. Choosing the right Sunday school class is like choosing the right thong. You want it to be comfortable. You don't want to feel like you have a string up your crack. You want to feel like it belongs to you and you belong to it. You want to feel so comfortable that you can wear it to the gym because it doesn't feel right going commando. If you choose the wrong thong, er Sunday School class, that hour you spend at the gym, er in Sunday school class, will be the longest hour of your life. And so it was today. Sunday school class that is. Not the thong. We don't wear thongs to church. We've moved past that. We however haven't moved passed picking the wrong sunday school teacher. It's real stressful picking the right class. The class in the relief society room has the comfy chairs and from my experience usually has a pretty good teacher. The primary room used to be where it was at. So it's usually a good idea to at least check it out. So after popping our heads into the relief society room and seeing it was pretty crowded we decided to head down to the primary room. Bad. Bad decision. Glen was teaching. (I probably should have changed his name...you know, in case one of us ends up dating him...it would save us the time of editing it later on....but on the off chance that one of us doesn't date him, I think using his actual name will spark the proper memories in us so that we can relive it fully anytime we read this blog.) Sorry Glen. Most awkward lesson of all time. First of all, it was already a struggle because its the Old Testament. I struggle with the Old Testament anyway, it's just harder to understand. I wish I could properly describe the awkwardness. He talks real quiet with tons of awkward pauses...which we all know (and by all, I mean Janae and I, since we're the only two readers) makes me crazy. The class was nearly empty, and I'm sure the few people that were in there stayed because they felt bad. Like us. Now I'm ticked because I can't figure out how to describe it. The questions he asked were hard. Like really hard. Like, "Why did they carry the Ark of the Covenant at the front of the group?" and "What exactly was in the Ark of the Covenant?" You know, questions that the teacher probably should have researched before the lesson. Now one would think that maybe he asked them because he wanted to test our knowledge. I don't think that was the case. Because he waited. He waited and waited and waited for someone to answer. Of course, none of us YSA's could answer them so Brother Scott and Brother and Sister Smith had to save the day. That's pretty much how the class went. And it went. And it went. 15 minutes longer than it was supposed to. I commented any chance I could break the awkward silence. You would think a teacher would be grateful for class participation. Especially since there was so much awkward silence...but the look on Glen's face after my comments made me feel like a moron. Fortunately for us we found some crazy cool cat emoticons on Facebook that we sent to our respective boys, who thought we were cray cray. So that was pretty much it. We picked the wrong thong for Sunday school and it was the longest hour of our life.

Practice

Ok, I've had enough of this. Let's face it....we may never finish blogging about the best spring break ever. We had a grand ol' time in Ireland but it has taken over 3 years to put it on paper. Maybe we were so busy dating at we didn't have time to blog much over the last 3 years. Maybe we thought that having not written about the trip of a lifetime was a legit (random fact: the popularity of the word legit has been increasing for years...or so Hyrum told me a few years ago...at about the same time we went on that trip.) excuse for delaying any posts about the rest of our lives. So you may be asking yourself (yes YOU, our one reader. Shoot...I doubt we even have that left at this point.) why on earth are we blogging now? Well, it is your lucky day because I am about to answer your question. And the answer is: while we have not been consistent bloggers for years, one thing we have been consistent about is our annual "Year in Review" post. At the rate we are going, we will likely procrastinate that was well. So I figured I'd get in the groove now. If not you would probably be getting our 2013 review in 2018. The good news about that is that we will likely be right where we are today. Living at the Legends as bachelorettes. The only difference would be our rent (because it goes up about $40 a year), our ward (because we get kicked out of our singles ward in 2017) and our Christmas ornaments (because 3 years of purple and green is sufficient). Consider this a practice blog. I'm practicing for our upcoming blog and for my new venture as I go back to school. I'm taking a class called "Writing for the Mass Media" and Janae tells me that this blog counts as mass media writing. (Since when was 1 person considered "mass"? Oh well, I'm just going to give Janae the benefit of the doubt on that one.) Unfortunately this is all the material I have. A very Asian Christmas awaits us so that's all. Oh, and one time we wore ugly sweaters and hugged each other. Yep...that happened once.

Day 4 Ireland

Top 5 things to do in Ireland according to www.discoverireland.com: 1. Kiss the Blarney Stone. Check. 2. Make friends with locals. Check. (Kinda, I mean, Greg is a redhead and we went to Ireland with him, so he counts right? Though we’re not entirely friends with him…so maybe not. Well there was that one time when we were waiting for the boys to finish up eating so we hung out by the car and watched that cute little Irish family with the boy who just had his first communion or something. Does that count? I think it counts.) 3. Sleep in castle. Check. (Ok, maybe not…but we slept pretty close to a Bunratty Castle, so I’m going to go ahead and count it.) 4. Discover Irish roots. Check. (It’s not like we would really fly all the way to Ireland and sit down and do some family history work. We’re Mormon. We get plenty of that here in Utah. But I do know that I have family from Ireland, so I’m going to go ahead and count that.) 5. See the Cliffs of Moher……Boy do I have a story for you! This is what the Cliffs of Moher are supposed to look like.

This is what we saw.

When I think of Ireland, I think of lots of green, lots of redheads, corn beef and cabbage, 4-leaf clovers, rain and fog. Up until this point we got most of those things in abundance. Everything you think of when you think of Ireland is true. It is soooo green. And sooo beautiful. There are lots of redheads, we have the pictures to prove it. We didn’t eat any corn beef and cabbage now that I think about it, but I’m sure it was available. Every gift shop had an abundance of clover souvenirs…my grandma has one in a frame on her bookshelf to prove it. The weird part about this trip is that we didn’t get any rain. We bought rain boots entirely for this vacation. I even bought a raincoat. We never needed either of them, except for the time I wanted to walk into the freezing cold ocean without taking off my shoes and rolling up my pants. Luckily I was wearing my wellies (that’s what the locals call them…at least that is what they called them in England, I’m assuming Ireland is the same. Maybe not.) And while it didn’t rain on Day 4, we got plenty of fog. We hung out near the cliffs for hours and hours hoping the fog would lift. We went in and out of a really super cool tower a million times, which from the outside was really super cool, but from the inside was just a tiny little gift shop. We watched a video about the cliff’s and hung out at the learning center for a while. We all bought new sweatshirts while we waited. The only thing we saw was the creepy chair sitting on the edge of the cliff. Oh, and we saw Scott do his traditional Irish jig in a misty field.

We finally decided we couldn’t sit and wait for the fog to lift all day. After all, the Dingle Peninsula was next on our list of things to see so we needed to get to it. And just like that, we drove off trailing in fog knowing that we would probably never see the Cliffs of Moher other than in pictures and this really cool bathroom stall art.

Thanks to our good friend Rick Steves we were able to navigate the Dingle Peninsula on our own schedule. He had it all mapped out for us down to the kilometers between stops so we wouldn’t miss a thing.

Honestly, I don’t remember a ton about the drive. I remember that it was a few hours and at some point Scott took a picture of himself without a shirt on….I know we weren’t there because it was at some stop that you had to pay to see, so I think Scott was the only one that went in. I don’t remember much else about it. I just happen to have that visual carved into my memory. Really, the only vivid memory I have from the Dingle Peninsula is view from our nap. Rick directed us to a beautiful scenic view. We unloaded the cars (Scott and Greg were on a cute little date together, as they were the majority of the trip because no one wanted to ride with them….except Dave. I’m sure Dave always wanted to ride with them but he was stuck with us) and walked down a cute little hill where we had this beautiful view.

Then we napped. We napped right there, in the luscious green grass of Ireland…NBC, in view of the ocean waves crashing against the cliffs. Oh what I wouldn’t give to go back to that moment. Heaven right there folks. And the sheep there…well, they get to have that experience every single day. Lucky little things! They just wake up there, like its NBC. After a long day of driving we made our way back to Limerick. Quaint little town just a few minutes away from our cottage. We picked up some dinner in Micky D’s, watched people stumble through the streets drunk of their rocker by 8pm and then headed to the pub. I can’t believe that listening to traditional Irish folk music live wasn’t on the list of the top 5 things to see/do. So just like the rebellious kids we are, our group of 6 Mormons walked into the pub, ordered cokes and acted like we were drinking the good stuff while we listened to the tunes of Ireland. I must say, it was pretty sweet. Unfortunately Janae and I were the only ones that could handle the noise (seriously…it wasn’t that loud) and the others decided it was better to enjoy from the street. And that’s a wrap...of Day 4. Look at the progress we’re making!!!

Day 3 Ireland

Do you ever think of Mad Cow Disease? I don’t, very often. The only time it comes to mind is when I think that I could be selling a few pints of blood a week to fund a few more Red Mango visits a week. Apparently after 20 years it is still a concern that the disease could manifest itself. I can’t wait until that happens. All of your readers out there (I think we’re up to 4 now) can say that you know someone with the Mad Cow. I promise this is relevant to our trip. Dave thought about Mad Cow Disease more often than most people. He brought it up several times a day. I’m sure it was brought up at one point on day 3. Day 3!!!! We’re finally getting to day 3….2 years later. Sorry, we have been real busy. Busy with boys and dating and preparing for our future families. Joking! We just haven’t gotten around to it. I think we’ve blogged a total of 4 times in the last 2 years. Fortunately for you all, I am getting paid to sit around and do nothing at an office this summer. I’m shooting to have our blog caught up in the next two weeks. And then I have plans. Very big plans….to keep blogging. Our lives are real interesting now. The other day one of our paintings fell off our wall. That was exciting (in a bad way). I’m an invalid…that’s exciting right? (In a bad way as well). Our neighbors let their dog pee on our balcony…that’s exciting as well. (Also in a bad way). So pretty much only bad things happen to us. But on day 3, something really great happened to us. I’ll get to that in a minute, first I need to say something rude about Greg because I’m pretty sure that is the common theme in all of our Ireland blog posts. We did everything Greg wanted to do, when Greg wanted to do them. On day 3 Greg wanted to go to the Aran Islands. There really were no complaints by any of us (and even if there were, I’m sure he wouldn’t have cared). Greg had all the timing figured out perfectly. He’s a great tour guide. We left our cute little cottage and headed to ferry port and got there approximately 1 hour after the ferry left. So we did what every other snooty American visiting Ireland for spring break would do. We charted a Jet. (Ok, so to be completely honest, it wasn’t technically a jet….more like a tiny little plane, but we still felt like high rollers.) We took a cute family photo in front of the plane (we don’t like touching…the pictures are evidence of that…looks like Greg and Scott would be getting no action this trip. It was tough to let them down) before we hopped in and Janae co-piloted us all the way to the Island which was about 10 minutes away.

The Aran Islands…so beautiful. Our tour guide (the real one, not Greg..with a crazy strong accent) drove us to a fort (I don’t remember what it was called, I just remember thinking that it didn’t seem like a fort). There was a short hike up to the top of it where we experienced the most beautiful views on the planet. I’m not even kidding. I know most of our blogs are not super serious…but I can’t seem to come up with something funny to say about how beautiful it was. The pictures do a pretty good job of showing the beauty, but even those are lacking. Sorry folks, if you want to experience the complete serenity and beauty that we did, you’ll have to book a trip to Ireland. It was there that I took my first engagement photo with Scott….turns out it was my last as well. We took some adorable family photos there, hung off a few cliffs and watched Scott entertain the masses with his traditional Irish jig.

Then we headed back down. Somehow we got on the topic of engagement rings and I heard the most ridiculous thing ever. Dave expressed some thoughts he had about one day proposing to his future wife with a fake engagement ring so that he could surprise her. What a terrible idea! Here are my reasons as to why I think that: 1.I doubt any guy is going to go buy a tiny little fake ring….fake rings are big and blingy. If that is what your woman sees when you open that little box and then later finds out it’s fake and that she can pick out her own…only ¼ of the size…she is going to be ticked. Ok, maybe that’s my only reason. I think it’s valid though. I understand Dave’s desire to surprise but here’s the thing boys (I’m pretty sure that no boys even read our blog...dang), it’s not a good idea to spring a proposal on a girl. You are taking a huge risk in doing that. If she doesn’t know it’s coming then there is a good chance she isn’t going to be cool with it. Look at that…you just got a two-fer. A fun blog about Ireland with a little life lesson in it. (And by “you” I mean the boys that don’t read our blog). The funny part of that whole conversation was that Dave got married this last December, and guess who didn’t propose with a fake ring…your welcome Dave! (Please note that Janae did not share the same thoughts as I did on that topic). After we made it down the fort we stopped at a cute little café for lunch. They had delightful soup and gluten free bread. There was a lot of that in Ireland. It was pleasant. We did some shopping at the gift store and assisted Dave as he tried to decide which earrings where perfect for his then girlfriend, Jacklyn. We were relieved when he finally found the ones and decided she was worth the $30 and pain and anguish required to make the purchase. After lunch we hopped back on the tour bus and visited a cemetery, a really creepy one. I pretty sure Janae and Scott got married at the cemetery. Something about touching thumbs through a hole in a rock. Oh, and Greg and Scott spent a good amount of time trying to convince the tour guide to say “33 1/3” because all Irishmen would pronounce that as “terty tree and a terd” and they like to act like 9 year olds. We caught the ferry on the way back and sat near all these snooty French kids.

We ended the evening in Gallway where we decided to pair off. Greg and Scott went to a fancy pub for Fish ‘n Chips, Michelle and I got smoothies, and Janae and Dave went to a fast food Fish ‘n Chips place. (Did you think I meant that we went on dates when I said we paired off? Not a chance. I mean, Michelle and Dave are an obvious couple choice, but you couldn’t pay Janae or I to deal with Greg for an evening…).