Slaker Wedding Guests to Blame!

I blame all of you wedding guests for my amazing hot mess of a day. If only you would have drank a few more glasses of wine i wouldn't be stuck with the task of drinking 6 1.5L's of Chardonnay. At first I was excited by the idea..... then i remembered i have no self control and can consume a whole bottle by myself if i'm not closely monitored. I have one person to monitor me, my husband..... for those that know him, you understand the irony in this. It was my monitor that had the brillant idea of opening a bottle last night..... and to open the second one as well. I'm hoping that we don't go about getting rid of the 2 bottles of Gold Schlager and 2 bottles of Jager in the same fashion. I can't make any guarantee's..... i will however continue to be ridiculously out-of-control for the majority of my life so maybe you should just get used to it :)

As you can imagine being two bottles deep ment that it was Travis and I's job to solve worldly issues.... like what i want to be when i grow up..... which ski passes to buy.......why i think i'd like living back in kansas..... neuter knox or no?....... what we should do as our farewell to the bat-shit crazy neighbor when we move........ why would jessica simpson let a coyote eat her dog.....

i-phones. ........ just a glimpse into our deep conversations as a funtioning drunk couple :)

Travis Doll???

Am i allowed to keep blogging even though we're not in Ireland Anymore?? I don't think i can change the web address....damn. Something i should have thought about BEFORE creating this :) But who was to know i'd actually enjoy it!!

First of all....about the last post....isn't my hubby sweet??? I'd have to agree with pretty much all of his favorite things. I thought i'd make a list of the things i DIDN'T like instead....

1. ????

hmmm, never mind, there wasn't a darn thing I didn't just adore about that place....i must go back, as i am sure there has to be something i would not like (nothing can be THAT perfect!)

I just got back to Colorado from ANOTHER wedding..... yes it was family too! We (my mom, sisters, granny, and cousins on mom's side) all headed out to Pacific City Oregon for Julie's wedding. I've never been to Oregon before and i must say i was rather impressed!! It's really pretty.... and very Liberal. Portland was like a really really big Boulder! Anyways, Pacific City was a really small little coastal town and it was just adorable! Julie and Johnny tied the knot on the beach with the most amazing view! Julie did an awesome job of planning a great and personal ceremony and reception!!

In other fun news, I'm officially a McGuire today!! I went to the Social Security office, and the DMV..... sad i know. I still don't understand why travis didn't want to take Doll....i think it's cute.

We're home for a whole 2 weeks now..... i'm sooooo ready for that too!! It's just be a whirlwind of traveling for the both of us this year!! I swear i've flown more this year then i have in the past 10 years combined!!! Next up, cousin Chris's wedding in Lawrence Oct. 9th. Then the next weekend Travis's mother is throwing us a reception in Mulvane!!! Looking forward to more family time....just not traveling time! Well.... until next time, Abby McGuire signing off :)

10 Exclamation Pts of Ireland!

First and for most have to say that Ireland by far has been one of the best trips I've ever been on by far when coming to scenery and things to do....with that said I'll run down a list of my top 10 Things that I liked about Ireland and/or happened there as well (Confusing statement ....I know)





10. By far and away the most beautiful scenery in the world!


9. The accents were super cool.....kinda wish I could have one.


8. Got to give mad props out to my wife for her awesome driving! She only almost killed us once and only got honked at twice!



7. The pizza.....yes I know pizza is an Italian thing however there were pizza places all over the place there and every single slice was amazing!



6. The castles and the history of the country .....i.e kissing the blarney stone!!! Still not sure I have the gift of gab/flattery but I think Abby can pick up my slack



5. Have to be the swanky hotel in Dublin....unfortunately only got to spend one day there but only really a couple sober hours :-)



4. Paddy's.....my new favorite whiskey....sorry Jack just something to a whiskey you can drink straight up and without ice!



3. The Pubs over there were so much fun especially the two on the first night and O' Connors ......Jimmie Just Marry her already!

2. The Cliffs of Mo her were amazing and every drive that we went on.....if there's one dull part of that country we never drove through it!

1. And number one would be.....sorry to sound corny but spending an amazing week with my wife and best friend Abby! Love you

I see London, I see Philly, I see Obama?????

Our travels home were the last thing in the world we were looking forward to!! The trip out wasn't so bad cause we were sooo excited and full of energy! Trip back....different story!! We had to get up at 5:30am Ireland time (10:30pm Denver time previous night) to get our butt's to the airport, drop of the honeymoon-mobile and check in. IF ONLY it were that easy.... we pull up to the car place, and no one is there.....so we wait (my favorite thing to do at 6am)....and wait....and finally around 620 someone (i'm assuming they are LATE) comes and unlocks the gate, lets us in, does a quick run around the car and shuttles us off to the airport. Checking in they have weird procedures for Air Lingus....they take your passport before you even talk to anyone at the desk...ask you many questions....THEN let you go to the desk to get your tickets. Once there we check the bags....they tell us "oh hopefully they make it from London to Denver".... excuse me??? i don't think they're supposed to say that kind of thing!! At this point, i don't care if it makes it or not.... new makeup and clothes are fun right! Alright..... so we're checked in and have an hour or so till we'll even know what gate we're supposed to go to..... we hang out with ohhhhh about 200 american soldiers making their way home...they were all over the place....buying all the presents they could for their family and friends....was kinda neat actually!! Flight from Shannon to London is fine....no worries, sleep most of the way. London, get there and have two hours before we know what gate again (why do they do this???). sweet...this will give us plenty of time to catch up our blog, pics and what not....NOPE. Do people not believe in free internet anymore...i mean really!! I'm annoyed at this point and just want to be home squeezing my puppies....but 13 more hours to go....so we press on. Flight from London to Philly is actually quite nice....US airways has nice comfy seats on their big planes :) We got fed...twice!! Pasta for the first one and a sandwhich four hours later....and lots of pop, getting my money's worth!! AND we got to watch The Proposal...it is HILARIOUS!!!! I'm sure people that weren't watching thought we were drunk or something cause we laughed out loud ALOT!!! I was laughing so hard i was crying (to the window....to the wall.....). We're about there and the pilot comes on and says "Well folks it looks like Obama has landed and cleared the area, so we shouldn't have the delays that others had"...... what?? Obama??? ok whatever, just land the plane and lets to this. He lied..... we circled for about 20 minutes before getting the go ahead to land. Soooooo now we're officially in the USA, Super pumped about this!! I can't wait to get back to driving on the right side of the road, fast food, cheap beer and work :) Next up....customs. This is a PAIN IN THE ASS!!! No, i don't have crops or any type of agriculture from a foreign place, no bugs, no cultures that i plan on growing, no drugs and no large sums of money, may i please go home now??? ...... next plane is scheduled to take off at 6:10. We board....everything is looking just peachy for a smooth rest of the trip. We pull out...... then pull back in?!?!? Now i'm no pilot, but i don't think this is customary! Turns out there is a screen not working in the cockpit so they need to have someone come look at it. An hour and a half later they think we're ready to hit the big blue sky....wrong again. That damn Obama decided to make his Philly trip short and leave about the same time everyone else wanted to..... so the runway was all sorts of backed up! We were #17 in line by the time we got all situated (i hear it was waaaay worse before we got out there!). 45 minutes later.... we're grumpy, late and not fans of US Airways or Obama.

But... we made it home (so did the luggage!). I forgot how much i love my bed....my sheets..... my pillow..... my shower..... my kitchen..... my couch..... my large television..... my large collection of empty boxes???????? Next adventure for the two of us...figuring out what to do with all the stuff we have from the wedding.

*tear*....*sniff*..... Last day in Ireland.

We were dreading this day from the second we landed in Ireland.... the last day of our honeymoon, adventure, vacation and pizza fest. I don't think we knew how much we actually dreaded it at that point, because there was no way to brace ourselves for the amazingness that is Ireland. But....the show must go on.

So we had one last drive we wanted to make on the way to the Shannon area. It's called Connor's Pass. It takes you thru two mountains that shape Dingle and also along the ocean. I was told that if we thought the Slea Head drive was tricky we'd better saddle up, cause this was even trickier!! ....is that a challenge?? ohhhh i think it was :) We reluctantly packed up, said goodbye to the sweet little house dog and jumped in the car. At first it was nothing....just the normal minii-sized road and some sweet views..... then the mini turned into basically not there!! Thank God there wasn't much traffic cause i'm pretty sure there would have been several cuss words dropped that day! This drice was fun cause we were higher up and inbetween mountains, so the views were different then we'd seen. We climbed up/down some things we probably shouldn't have (i remember telling Travis that if Debbie were here we'd be in SOOO much trouble!) We climbed up this one little place where there was a waterful, just certain that the damn water had to be coming from somewhere. .... higher, higher..... travis are you SURE there's a pond up here...... yes abby, quit being a baby..... higher higher.....TRAVIS seriously..... i think i see something.... travis this marriage isn't going to be a long one if i climb up the whole damn mountain and there isn't a flipping pond (i kid i kid!!). Well....there was a pond..... and it was freezing!!!! travis wanted to get it.... or actually push me in, i managed to scare him away from the idea and we sat for a while admiring the view from uptop....(lots of taking in the scenery is vital in a place like this....some tears may have been shed too) After reminding him that my mom would kill him if he didn't bring me back in one piece he helped me down the mountain and we were on our way.....again!!!

We were scheduled to fly out of the Shannon airport at 845 am Tuesday morning. I had asked travis is he wanted to stay in Shannon the night before or if he'd rather stay in a smaller irish town. He voted small town, which we both regretted at this point. Buuuuuut, a 15 euro late fee a piece wasn't something we felt like was necessary so we went to Quin. This place was ohhh about 10 minutes from Shannon, so not bad. But when we get there, the room isn't ready...and there's no internet. I was peeved. We hadn't had internet for two days and how in the world am i supposed to update you guys when i can't get a flipping connections!!!! I pouted....just a little! Travis was ready to just go up to the room get our stuff situated and rest. At first i was on board, but then decided we're in flipping IRELAND, there has got to be something cool in the area we can go see!! I researched, and i was right (weird!). The Cliffs of Moher were only a short hour away and a must see!! (because we hadn't had the internet i was unable to figure this out until we went to mcdonalds and used theres....yes mcdonalds.) Off we go....again....in the small car....on the small road.....to a place that we hope to God TomTom knows how to get to. Tom seems to know where it is....so we continue on!! As we pull into the nearest town, the first thing we see is a golf course...now there are plenty of these in Ireland but this course in my opinion is the DEVIL COURSE!!! I have never in my life seen land with so many hills....i mean seriously, do they want people to play there? The best of golfers could golf on here and leave crying.... if it wasn't for the scenery i don't think anyone would be brave enough to play. Maybe that's why they're booked up for like a year out, men like the challange..... or maybe they just like to throw away $1000 on a game of golf....i don't golf, so i don't understand. It did make me miss my dad though.... he'd of been grinning from ear to ear if he could have seen it! Anyway....on to the Cliffs. I've seen cliffs, i've been to the Grand Canyon and what not.... well, the GC's got nothing on these bad boys!! We tried throwing several rocks over, never seeing it hit the water.... wind? bird? who knows....all i know is it was steep!! The cement trail ended like a quarter of the way around it, but some smart or dumb people continued past that, leaving a sweet illegal trail for all of us non-rule followers. We made it about 3/4 of the way before i was over it.... it was cold, windy and i was hungry :) We got some great pics though....

Some pics from Dingle....

The fog.....awesome!


Dingle

Our Sweet Air pic trav mentioned :)

One of the beaches!

Slea Head drive....aka, one scary ass road :)

Ok...i was NOT that bad TRAVIS!!! I may have ran into the wall a few times and thought he was leading me to the wrong B&B, but i was fine :) (it's probably ok that we can't find Paddy's whiskey here!). Like trav said we got up, ate our lovely breakfast and went back to sleep for a bit! After all, we are on vacation!!! We got up and around and decided to take the Slea Head Drive. Its a short drive, about 30 minutes if you go the speed limit 50km/hour, and don't stop (not likely!). Well.... i was not about to drive that fast on this road. It's the size of ohhh a small car, two lanes, and the only thing keeping you from flying off the side into the atlantic is a small rock fence!! It was scary....and so you can imagine that everytime a car came up i made my usual Behhhh.... sometimes i may have actually screamed :) We stopped at least 12 times.... well at least when everyone else did, we're followers!! It was AMAZING!!! It was slightly foggy that day so the clouds were just over the mountains on the other side of the ocean making for one hell of a view!! We also got our first look at some of their beaches!! No.... we didn't strip our clothes off and run into the deep blue.... if we would have done this, we ourselves would have been blue!! That water is f'n COLD!!! I'm not sure how there were kids playing in it, they're used to it i'm sure, but still!! Some were smart and wore wet suits.....still crazy in my book!! ..... We had planned to stop for lunch somewhere along the drive, but turns out unless you want to eat in someones's actual kitchen, you're out of luck! So about 430 when we made it back we were STARVING!!!! And as luck would have it, Dingle had a pizza place :) We had what they call the GTC.... garlic tomato and cheese bread..... i don't think i need to go into detail about how good this is....... you should just know!! I started to not feel so good after dinner so we went back to the house and rested, watched some tube and just chilled. Around 9 or so travis decided it was time to eat again, eating may or may not have been one of our favourite things to do in Ireland!! Every town we'd been in we kept seeing at least 4 Chinese places. This baffled us. I mean, don't get me wrong, we love us some chinese food, but in Ireland??? We figured we'd better check it out..... and we weren't disappointed!! It was really good, and SUPER busy!! The only strange thing about it was before your food they brought out this spongey white things....almost like rice cakes, but not.... i have no idea. I thought they were gross, trav didn't mind. Then it was back to bed..... we were tuckered out at this point in the trip..... it's rough eating all the time and sight seeing :) Only one full day left in Ireland..... tear.

Ring of Kerry and Dingle

travis has the urge to blog..... so here he is :)



So I have multiple things to say......It's day 5 and I have to say Abby's been a wicked good driver. Only about taken out one poor little suicidal sheep and just brushed up against one other cars side few mirror......totally their fault though. Aside from that Ireland is fantastic.....I'm so glad we came over here as opposed to a beach which we found along our drive any way today.....however we didn't go in the water as it was freezing but others were enjoying it and it looked like fun. Another beautiful day for the drive weather was 62 and sunny.



So as we arrive in to dingle we notice a crowd of people most of them in running gear looking rather sluggish as they've just ran The First Annual Marathon of Dingle which runs accross Slea Head Drive....still not sure what drives people American or Irish to run that far for any reason.....after getting in to town we went to park in a "car park" to find our B&B because Tom let us down and couldn't find it. So as we went on a walk about we decide to go to the pier and check it out we ended up taking some amazing photo's of ourselves catching sweet air i.e. the pictures to come later!

Up next was lunch which we ate at Danno's Pub! I had the fish and chips and Abby had the special.....which we both had the day before.....amazing sandwiches (Ham, tomatoes, and amazing cheese....sometimes onions can't talk anymore about them i'm getting hungry). So as most of our story has gone the first night we proceeded to eat dinner have lots to drink then stumble home.....well abby stumbled I watched in amazement as every time i thought she was going down she managed to catch herself. Before this however we went in to a Pub called ~Dick and Macks which is accross from the church....the church is conincedently accross from Dick and Macks. There we made quick friends with the old town drunk there who tried to steal Abby's ring becaused he guessed the net value of it was $10,000.......yeah well he would have been sadly dissappointed and he wasn't a very good thief. . . . . however his body guard scared me and looked similar to Indian Jones/Gorbachov....sp....he also fancied bringing in his own bottle of liquor as opposed to buying it over the bar! Smart man in my Book. So as you can guess the next day to follow was going to be rough but no worries we ate then took a sweet ass nap! Abby you Up!

In honor of game day....and our Purple Pride!

A Little Wildcat shout out from Ireland!! GO CATS!

K.....

S....

U....

U....

WILDCATS!

A glimpse into Heaven!!

What our view was for basically the whole drive.....amazing!


A small fishing town called Castletownberra

Sunset.....

Day 4....DUDE!!! You almost just took out that sheep!

Hello!!!! What an amazing trip we've had so far (i'm sure it'll only get better!!) Yesterday after we made our way from Kinsale to Blarney Castle (Yes we kissed it, and yes we have much more eloquence from it!!) we came to Kenmare. This town isn't a big place, and it's actually quite quiet during the week. When we first got here we just walked around for a few hours, exploring, window shopping and checking out the views! We stopped into a bar for some lunch and ordered the worlds HOTTEST pizza!!....side note, the pizza here, is AMAZING!! sorry papa johns, you've been pushed out of first place in our eyes :) We've had pizza at least once a day for all four days we've been here! So if we're fat when we get back, i blame the pizza! After that we found ourselves a nice little wine store and helped ourselves to a nice bottle while uploading pics! We headed out to find some live music and drinks. We found ourselves in a little place called PF McCartney's. It was a great time. We met a couple that was visiting from Florida... they pretty much are doing the same route as we are but reversed! So they had some good things to say about all the places we're headed next! We then went to a bar called O'Connors. this place wasn't much bigger then the Lou in Aggieville, but Travis insisted we stop in and get a drink of Paddy's! We sat at the bar and quickly made friends with three little irish men. They kept asking me if my dogs name was Toto....this was funny the first 10 times, then i was getting annoyed!! They were very friendly though, and gave us some good advice as to what to do today! They said since we're diving the Ring of Kerry tomorrow that we should drive the Ring of Bera also. IT WAS UNBELIEVABLE!!! I don't think it's fair that people get to live here, and see this everyday......it's breathtaking to say the least! And on that note, we'll need someone to pack up our stuff and send it out here. we won't be returning home.....ever :) That was pretty much an all day adventure.....but driving along the coast and mountains was worth it!!! another side not, sheep and goats....they don't stay in fenced areas, they like to stand in the middle of the road and apparently some of them have death wishes! We made it back here in time to stop and watch the sunset...again, UNBELIEVABLE!! (seeing a trend here!). I'm posting all my pics as we speak on facebook, i'm sure they won't do justice, but it's all i have!! I'll try to get a few on here as well!! Tomorrow we're off to drive the Ring of Kerry as we make our way to Dingle. The locals call it "The Kingdom". Apparently you can't get much closer to God!!!

Streets of Kenmare.


I'm super upset that not only do the skittle tast different, they look different. Why mess with a good thing?

Rock of Cashel. AMAZING!! Thank God for hunger pains :)

Guiness....aka cattle feed.

St. Patricks in Dublin.

A few pics!

This is as Irish dressed as you can get!!


I can not explain how scary kissing this things way. i was pretty much doing a semi-back bend while holding on. Back in the day there wasn't anything to hold on to. So you had better trust who ever it was holding you upside down!

Kenmare.... BEAUTIFUL, and it only gets better.

Thought we'd throw in a pic of the ass-backwards car!

A few forgotten comments and thoughts

While driving in the car today we were discussing a few things we'd forgotten to mention!!!
1. Guiness Factory. This place was HUGE!!! it was very informational, but to tell you the truth it smelled like cattle feed (and I know what that smells like!!) I have not ever really drank a Guiness before (besides the occasional Irish Car Bomb!) So i decided what better place to do so then at the place where it's made. And just as i suspected, it tasted just like i figured. Cattle Feed!! Not that i've eaten cattle feed, but if i were to guess what it tasted like, i'd say guiness is a prime example.
2. Driving. I briefly menitoned this in the last post, but i must tell you IT IS WEIRD!!! I can handle the stick shift being on the left, no problem. It's all the damn roundabouts that make my life here in Ireland Hell!! they're all two lane and if you dare try to exit, you'd better be in the left, or you'll get honked at, ran into, stared down and possible even flipped off!! I'm happy to report that i've only been honked at 2 or so times.... so again, i am proud of myself! Yesterday we had driven from Dubline, Cashel to Kinsale and those roads were mostly highway like roads so no biggie. Flash forward to today and we found ourselves on roads that were no wider then our regular full size lane back home. (hence why the cars are sooo damn tiny here!). If i'm the only car on the road i'm fine, but the second another car is in sight and about to pass i tend to make a MEHHH. Depending on the size of the oncoming car the MEHHH would be hardly noticable or a shriek, Travis was really enjoying this!! OHHH and also, the gas here is RETARDED!!! At first i thought we were in gas heaven, seeing 1.16 on the signs. I didn't realize they sell it by the Liters. We spent 43 euro's to fill up our little car. ($61.19) RE-DONK-U-LOUS!! So next time you want to complain about gas prices...don't.
3. Housing. We were strolling around town looking at all the lovely sights and what not when we passes a real estate place. They post some houses for sale in the window.... i decided we're moving here so thought we'd better check out the prices.... sad to say, we'll be living in the USA for quite some time!!! The lowest price we saw was 268,000 euros or $391,000. I have no flipping clue how people afford that!! No wonder the majority of the houses here are bed and breakfasts...... just saying.
4. Cost of Booze. EXPENSIVE..... like not even college town type expensive....we're talking hanging out at the Ritz expensive. Guiness=6euros($8.75) more expensive then the cheap seats at the Rockies. Wine=5euros($7.30) While at the bar we got me wine and travis a bud heavy, costing us 11.75euros ($17.12) Needless to say we went ahead and bought a bottle for $20 and will be drinking that in our room before dinner :)
5. Black & White pudding. Soooo for breakfast this morning travis ordered the traditional irish breakfast. It had 2 fried eggs, some bacon (which by the way looks like pig ears here!) sausage links and these little patties that are called Black and White pudding. I tried the lighter one and decided it wasn't bad, tasted like sausage almost. Made travis try the black one and didn't really like it. Well come to find out, they are just fried sausage, the black one being cooked in blood. we won't be eating that again.....MEHHH.
6. Craic. Not to be confused with the drug of choice for the rock-n-rollers. Basically it means, a shit ton of fun. If we were to say it's the craic ninety (weird i know) we'd mean it's the most fun possible. The ninety means like close to perfection or something....i don't know i just shake my head and pretend i know what they're saying!!!!

Ok. Well those are the things we remembered in the car. We'll blog later about today's adventures!! Be sure to check out our pics on my facebook!

Wrong side of the road!

Hmmmm lets see, where to start! Yesterday after a much needed nap we got up and went to dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe! I know i know...we can eat at those in the states, but we were too hungry to search any further!! After dinner (and a bottle of wine) we decided we needed to find a local pub with some live Irish Music! Well that we did!!! It was super packed and super loud, but fun to see/hear local sounds!! After a bit we found a seat at the bar, and after ohhh about 10 minutes, a pair of lovely Canadian ladies set down beside us! They were there for one of their 50th birthdays! They LOVED us.... and Paddy's (whisky). So they bought us several shots.... which i'm sure we could have done without! We also met a lady from Texas. She was a funny little lady :) We were out way later then we should have been, but it was well worth it!

This morning we woke up and headed to Kinsale (south coast). (Well, first of all i should tell you that we rented a car. I've never driven on the opposite side, or a stick shift that's on the left. And i have to say, i'm pretty impressed with myself!) Now for those of you who know me, know that when i'm a little hungover i just want to eat!! So after much complaining we stopped in a small town of Cashel. Well thank god for my hunger cause this place was AMAZING! I've been trying to post pics on my facebook, but for some reason that site and this one won't let me download right now. I'll keep trying. After walking around all day we got back on the road. But not before making a dumb american mistake!! We set in the car for ohhhh about 10 minutes and COULD NOT figure out how to get the damn car in reverse! We asked a couple passing by and they were nice enough to help us out. I'm sure they got a kick out of that! We made it to our bed and breakfast around 6 pm. It's in an amazing location and has amazing views! We're about 10 minutes from the town. After getting settled in the room we decided we needed to eat again :) We went into town and wondered for a while. Kinsale is a very small harbor town, but with a ton of character! I wasn't able to take any pictures because it was dark, we're hoping to get back down there in the morning on our way to the Blarney Castle!

The plan for tomorrow is to head back up to Cork to see the Blarney Castle and of course kiss the Blarney Stone! After that we're back on the road again, this time headed to Kenmare. Hopefully i'll be able to get some pictures posted!!

Pissing Rain... Dublin

Well, i'd like to say our travels were all smooth but i'd for sure be lying!! Our flight from North Caronlina to Philly was about an hour late leaving which ment we had to dead sprint from that flight to our connecting flight for Dublin. Literaly the second we walked off the plane we heard "final boarding call for flight 722 to Dublin". It wouldn't have been so bad if the gate were ohhhh just around the corner, but NO, this one was at least a mile away!! There were about 6 of us just Prefontaining it down the concourse! So after we busted our ass's to get there, we sat on the runway for about 2 freaking hours!! It was a mess! But we made it!! (Slept for a grand total of 4 hours thru the flight, so we're a littel sleepy!)

The Dublin airport leaves something to be desired, it's old and dirty and very very unorganized! Luggage was all here, which made this girl VERY happy! We got a taxi to our hotel....and as luck would have it, we had the coolest cab driver in the world! He was just this little old man that is retired and drives the taxi for a few hours a day because he's bored and the weather hasn't been allowing for much else to do!

THINGS WE LEARNED FROM THE CABBIE:

1. Irish rush hour lasts till damn near noon.... they're in no hurry apparently
2. Fuck is a very popular word here....I fit right in.

3. The Brits like to come down here on the weekends and "cause a noisy rucus (sp?)"
4. When he wakes up and its "pissing" outside he likes to go back to bed till noon, then have sex with his wife Sheila.

5. You don't tip bartenders.... but cab drivers its ok :)

6. Marriage is a wonderful thing if its with the right person, and as far as he could tell we'll be just fine!

Ireland DAY 1.... sleepyheads!

Well we did it, we're officially mr. and mrs. mcguire!!! What a GREAT weekend!!! Thanks to everyone that made the trip, and that helped my mom with all the set up/take down and everything else! We couldn't have asked for a better day! We went home yesterday, opened presents, take a much needed 3 hour nap and finished packing! Is it just me or is it impossible to feel fully prepared for trips like this? We sat and stared at our bags going over and over the things we need, but some how i'm sure something was forgotten!! I like to live by my mom's philosophy, if you forgot it buy it :) although some things aren't purchasable, like travis's passport that he tried to leave behind at security!!! So now we wait! We board at 1120, fly to charolette, then to philly, then FINALLY to Dublin! From philly it's about a 7 hour flight, with the 7 hour time difference. so that puts us in Dublin at 840am Tuesday morning their time!! The plan is to catch a cab to our hotel, leave our bags and go exploring!! We are going to try to NOT sleep during the day so hopefully the transition to their time won't be all that bad! We're staying at a swank little boutique hotel in the area called Temple Bar Distric....wonder if that means we're by the bars :) pure accident.... well ok not really but I hear it's an awesome area! So hopefully the next time you hear from us we're safe on the ground Guiness in hand!!

Saturday....are you here yet????

Well, here we are....4 days away. Snuck up on me that's for sure!! I'd like to lie to you and tell you that we're fully prepared and everything is in place...... but i won't. I'm losing my mind going over small details, decorations, schedules.....yada yada yada. My mother, bless her heart, has been a HUGE help. But sometimes i am scared to answer the phone when she calls.... what now? what decision do i need to make (for those of you who know me, know i am NOT a decision maker....i'll sit in the car for an hour before giving in and deciding where we're eating!)... what task do i have now!!! At first this was fun.... i liked having jobs to do! i mean after all this is OUR wedding not my moms! But enough is enough..... no more labels on shot glasses, no more chalk paint on beer glasses, no more welcome baskets, flowers, cake, dresses, garters, tux's, RSVP's..... NO MORE!!! JUST BE HERE ALREADY SATURDAY!!!!! All i want to do is marry my best friend, party the night away with all my amazing friends and family and get on a damn plane to Ireland!!! ....... ok i'm done.... that was my rant for the day (can't promise there won't be more...you never know!)

On a happier note....Family starts arriving TOMORROW!!!!! My parents are on their way up with the trailor (yes....that's how much stuff my mom has for this) tomorrow afternoon, and they'll swing by the airport to pick up Jess!! Can't wait to get the festivities started!!!