Back in England...

While I was traveling, Alex was holding down the fort.  Except they didn't stay home very much while I was gone.  They did a few trips while I was in Denver and Ireland.  Alex did well with the kids, but he also had to find someone to watch Savannah one day when she was sick.  About the only time anyone got sick last year was when I was gone - lucky me.  Not so lucky for Alex, who had a presentation that he had to give, which happened to be the day Savannah was home from school.  Alex had to pick her up the day before, because she started complaining about her ear hurting.  Since she went home sick that day, she wasn't allowed to return the next day (school policy).  So Alex had to rely on our neighbors, Bill & Jess, to watch her for a couple of hours.

The weekend I was in Denver, Nathan and Jared had a youth convention.  While they were there, Alex took Owen, Weston, and Savannah to see puffins.  Seeing puffins was the top of Owen's list of things to see while in England.  They got to take a boat, the Serenity III, to the Farne Islands to see puffins.  The picture with the name of the boat with the 3 kids standing in front of it was ironic - anything but serenity! 

On Monday, the kids didn't have school, so Alex took all of them to see Hutton's Unconformity, near Berwick-upon-Tweed.  

Then, the first weekend I was in Ireland (May 12th), Alex took the kids to the Preston Temple and hung out with one of his fellow missionaries that he served with as a missionary in Utah.  They did a hike nearby and then wandered around the temple grounds.  

The next weekend, the 17-20th, Alex took the kids out of school for a day and did a trip to Wales.  Jared's birthday was on the 18th - it was the first birthday of the kids that I'd ever missed.  When I scheduled the Ireland trip, I didn't realize I had scheduled right through his birthday.  I guess 46 out of 47 birthdays (combined) is pretty good... Alex made a cake for Jared, but didn't take a single picture of him with the cake or opening presents.  The only picture he took was Jared with the Lego set he got! 

They flew from Newcastle to Bristol late Thursday evening.  The first picture is Weston taking a nap in the airport - he was so tired! 

They had the beach all to themselves.

Alex parked the car at the airport on Thursday evening, and I found it when I flew in from Ireland on Sunday morning.  I headed straight to church when I got in, and then picked them up on Sunday evening.  It all worked out pretty well, besides everyone being all worn out after all the traveling.  But there were more travels yet to come in May...

Ireland

May was a busy travel month.  I got back from Denver on Tuesday the 8th, was there in England for 2 days, and then flew to Ireland on Friday the 11th.  (I had time in there to do a Wednesday night activity for the Young Women.)  

My sister Audrey and sister-in-law Carrie planned a 9 day trip to Ireland.  I had complained about all of the traveling that Alex got to do and how I wanted a vacation... Alex agreed that I could plan a trip.  I didn't want to go by myself, so luckily Carrie and Audrey were both able to take a vacation with me.  None of us had been to Ireland, and we all wanted to see it, so that became our destination.  It worked out really well for me, because my flight from Newcastle to Dublin was only about £40 roundtrip.  Accommodations, car rental, and food was another story... but the flight was cheap. 

It was raining when we arrived, and that caused some flight delays, but we were on our way by Friday afternoon.  We actually had great weather all week.  It only rained on arrival and the day we took a boat tour of Skellig Michael.  For Ireland, that little amount of rain was amazing!  We were lucky to get good weather.  

I don't remember exactly where we were on what days - we stayed in a new place every night.  We made a big loop from Dublin to Kilkenny to Cork to Killarney to Galway and back to Dublin.  We didn't make it to Northern Ireland.  

Here are photos from the places we visited.  I took a ton of photos - these were only a small portion of them!

Our first visit was Malahide Castle - the photo of us sitting on the steps was us trying to replicate a photo in the brochure.  I think Audrey ended up with the brochure, so I don't have it to show.  But we got a kick out of how similar our staged photo looked to the one we were trying to replicate!  

We spent the first day or so exploring around Dublin.  

We did a hop on, hop off bus tour in Dublin.  That last picture of Audrey and me is from the top of the bus.

This Ha'penny Bridge was pretty cool - I like the story about how it got its name.  According to Wikipedia:  Before the bridge was built, there were 7 ferries, which were in bad condition.  The operator was informed that he must either fix the ferries or build a bridge.  The operator chose to build a bridge and was allowed to charge a half penny toll from anyone crossing it.

Glendalough was a pretty place for a hike, but we were disappointed by the Poulanass Waterfall - not impressive (but the name was funny to say).

We had to visit the Blarney Castle to kiss the Blarney Stone.  I think it's actually pretty gross to kiss a stone that lots of other people kiss, but we went ahead and kissed the famous stone.  It was surprisingly scary to lean back low enough to reach the stone - it's a long drop to the ground from the top of the castle.  I can see why they put the bars there and have someone helping to lower you and hold you in place.

Carrie wanted to pet a sheep in the wild... she got one by the end, but this was her first attempt:

Still at the Blarney Castle... we found a cool tree and had fun posing in it (after laughing so hard about trying to get up in the tree... Audrey or Carrie might have a picture of my bum and me draped over the trunk as I attempted to get up on the tree).  The fern garden was pretty cool too.

At the last minute, we planned a boat tour of Skellig Michael island, which was the place where scenes from the Last Jedi were filmed.  It wasn't in our original itinerary, but once we realized what it was and along our route, we wanted to see it.  Unfortunately, it was cloudy and rainy the morning we were there.  And we were unlucky to just miss the season for the tours of the island itself.  They weren't doing tours until the next week.  But we still took the boat tour, despite having to wear heavy rain gear and not being able to see much.  It was pretty amazing what we were able to see.

Our boat launched from Port Magee, a small town, which probably was mostly unknown before Star Wars.  It now gets quite a bit of tourists to see Skellig Michael.

We had a fun time watching Irish dancing during dinner one evening.  Audrey and Carrie even volunteered to learn some dancing (I didn't dance - someone had to take video... 😊 ) 

One of my favorite things of our whole trip was watching a Sheepdog Demonstration (maybe near Kenmare?  We had a hard time finding the place - google maps led us to someone's driveway with chickens looking at us...) 

The border collies are well trained to gather the sheep on command.  We also got to see several different kinds of sheep.  And...the dogs did remind me of our border collie Kai (who is not well trained, but is a smart dog too).

We took our shoes off at Inch Beach, despite it being a bit chilly.  I'm not sure why they call it Inch Beach, because the beach seemed to be miles long...  (I guess Inch or Ínse means sea meadow... that makes sense.)

 We drove along Slea Head, in search of a destination with that name.  We didn't really find a particular place, just a drive with look out points.  We did stumble upon a pretty beach, which was the perfect spot to stop and relax. 

It was a little overcast at Cliffs of Moher, but it wasn't raining and the temperature was nice.  The sun came out eventually. 

We walked all the way out to the end (Hag's Head).  By the time we did that, my health app said we had walked 6 miles. Instead of walking back, we found out we could catch a shuttle back to the visitor's center (walking just a bit further to a nearby pick up point).  It was  €7 each, but it was worth not having to walk all the way back the way we came.  We took the Paddywagon back to the visitor's center!  One of the highlights of our walk on the Cliffs was seeing a white horse along the way.  Audrey had been joking about seeing a unicorn - we figured the white horse was pretty close!  Ha ha.  

And we hit rush hour on the way back to our accommodation!  😄   Mooooo.....

Most of Kylemore Abbey was closed off for viewing, but one of the neat things to see was the miniature cathedral.  It was built in memory of Mitchell Henry's wife, Margaret, who died at 45 when she contracted dysentery in Egypt.

The last day of our trip, Carrie drove north to run in a race.  Audrey and I did a bike tour of Aran Islands.  We had a nice stroll across the island (and a few hills to work through as well).  We met up with Carrie again back in Dublin, where we flew out on Sunday morning. We had a great trip - seeing lots of things and eating lots of food!  We did some shopping in there one day as well, but I don't remember which day that was.  That wasn't a highlight for me... I think I got all the highlights.  It was so nice to have a vacation without the kids!

Denver

The beginning of May, I flew to Denver, Colorado for my grandma's funeral.  She passed away in February, but since she was cremated, we didn't need to have the funeral right away.  We figured out when my parents and all of my siblings could make it, and that happened to be the first week of May.  I got in on Thursday evening, the 3rd.  Audrey and Sam had already arrived, as well as my parents.  We went to dinner with them and my uncle Doug, although I couldn't eat anything since it felt like 1:30 or 2:00am to me, coming from England.  

After dinner, we chatted with the Savages for a while.  They are currently serving as mission presidents in the Denver North mission.  Sister Savage was one of the missionaries that taught my parents and key to them joining The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  We met one of the other missionaries a few years ago, but had not met Sister Savage.  It was fun to hear her perspective about teaching my parents.  We are so grateful for her service and decision to serve a mission.  Those choices have made a huge impact on our lives and our happiness.  Here they are with all of us on Saturday evening:

   

I jumped ahead... on Friday, I hung out with Audrey, Sam, and the boys.  We went for a hike, had lunch at the Cow Eatery, and went to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.  We watched Pandas at the I-Max at the museum.  The rest of my siblings arrived on Friday afternoon/evening, so we got to have dinner with all of them on Friday.  

 Saturday morning was the funeral.  While not the ideal for happy family gatherings, it was a nice little reunion with my siblings, parents, and extended family.  The funeral service was nice - we sang How Great Thou Art  during the service. 

On Saturday evening, we enjoyed dinner with family and the Savages.  It was good to see my cousin Enola and my aunt Angela and Uncle John (my dad's brother).  My mom's brothers, Gary and Doug, were also there of course.  I also got to see my cousin Justin and his family. 

On Sunday morning, some of us went to church.  Others headed back home.  It was a short visit!  By the afternoon, it was just me and my parents.  After church, we headed over to the Denver Temple and wandered around the temple grounds.  It's not open on Sunday, so we couldn't go inside, but the flowers were beautiful and we enjoyed the peace of the temple. 

The necklace I'm wearing in the picture below was my grandma's.  (On Saturday afternoon, my sisters, Stephanie (Justin's wife), and I went through her jewelry and picked out what we wanted.  It's fun to have some mementos of her.)

On Monday morning, we drove by two of my childhood homes in Aurora and my elementary school.  We also got to have lunch with Sharon, who was our next door neighbor - she still lives there!  Fun to chat with her and take a little trip down memory lane.  

I flew out on Monday evening, arriving back in England on Tuesday the 8th.  Long flights for just a few days in the states, but fun to see family and friends!

Tough choices

Alex, Nathan, and Jared went to a Premier League soccer game the end of April.  It ended up being disappointing because Newcastle lost to West Brom 1-0 (so they didn't even get to experience Newcastle scoring a goal).  They were supposed to go to the Newcastle vs. Manchester game in February (the day before Alex left for Antarctica).  Nathan got tickets for Christmas (and they were really expensive too - about $300 each).  It was a Saturday game and supposed to be one of the best games of the season.  However... about 2 weeks before the game, we found out that they moved the game to Sunday.  That presented a couple of problems: (1) Alex wouldn't be able to make it, since he was headed out that day to Antarctica  (2) We don't usually attend things like this on Sundays (not keeping the Sabbath Day holy).  

In the past, on rare occasions we have attended a game or went out to eat or something on Sunday.  But it's not considered an appropriate activity for Sunday in our faith, so that presented a tough choice.  Should we go to the game or not?  In our minds, we were trying to justify that since we spent so much money, we should just go to the game.  We asked some family members what they thought - we had some thinking along the same lines as us, that it would be okay this time.  My nephew Nicholas said we should just not go to the game and we would be blessed.  

We decided to try to sell the tickets, but we had a deadline on that before they shipped the actual tickets to us.  By the evening of the deadline, we hadn't received word of a sale from the vendor, so we still had the tickets and the same dilemna.  I kept thinking about what Nicholas said, and I also had recently read a talk about keeping the sabbath day holy.  In that talk, it pointed out how someone began to justify behaviors by past experiences, rationalizing that it was okay because of the times in the past.  And we found ourselves in the same situation.  We thought about when we went to the World Cup Final in Germany on a Sunday evening.  We were justifying based on a past not-as-good choice.  As we kept thinking about it, I felt like we should just chalk it up and not go to the game, that the Lord would bless us for making a better choice.  So we decided that we wouldn't go and would keep the Sabbath Day holy.

After we made the decision, the next day we learned that 2 of the tickets DID sell, so that was a blessing.  We weren't able to sell the last ticket, but maybe it will serve as a reminder of the choice made to keep the Sabbath Day holy that day. What made it even harder was learning that it was a great game and Newcastle won 1-0.  Missing a great game and $300 wasted, but can you really put a price on choosing the right?  Nathan will be able to remember that experience and the sacrifice he made. We don't know how, but I know he will be blessed for making that choice.  

The expensive souvenir ticket:

 (disregard the price and the generic name - we did pay much more than 48 pounds for it!)

Adventure Valley

We took an outing to a nearby play place in April, which had lots of things to do:  mini golf, giant air pillows to jump on, animals, cars, pony rides, and several play areas.  Perfect place for kids!  The weather was great that day too.  

Ahhh...sunshine

When we had a nice sunny day in April, Savannah set up her area outside to enjoy the sun.  Books, drink, side, table, blanket, and pillow.  Just soaking up some rays.  Funny girl!