Ireland

My baby sister lives in Dublin with her Irish husband Jeff, they had a baby boy this year on Feb 23. So on April 30, Brian, Caroline, Caleb and I all flew to Dublin to visit them and meet my new nephew Joshua. (Joshua and Caleb, isn't that cute!?!) We were pretty nervous about the flight, there are no direct flights so we had to fly to JFK and then to Dublin and total travel time was 15 hours or something like that, Caroline doesn't sleep unless she is in her crib or pak and play, and Caleb hates to be confined now that he can crawl SO we had low expectations for the flight but the kids were little rockstars on the plane and we got lot's of compliments from other passengers once the flight was over. They were probably so sad when they saw us boarding, and then relieved we didn't have criers the whole 7 hours. It was a little bit exhausting entertaining both kids for that long (Caleb did sleep for about 1/2 the flight) but worth it. The trip home is another story but I'll get to that.

Once we got there we eased into the new time zone the best we could, we pretty much ended up keeping the kids up later so it wouldn't be too hard to adjust back once we got home. The first night we were there I put Caroline to bed at 8pm and she sletp until 1:30pm the next day. I would have been happy just to sit around the house and hang out with my sister and my ADORABLE nephew Joshua but we actually did a ridiculous amount of stuff considering we had a 10 week old, 7 month old and 2 year old to tote around. We spent a few days in Donegal where Jeff grew up and his family still lives. It is beautiful, on the Irish coast. We went to the beach one day, sweet Caroline was so excited when she heard we were going to the beach and then it was windy and freezing and she had forgotten that she hates sand. She was a good sport about it though. On our way back from Donegal we stopped at Giant's Causeway, and then at Dunluce Castle which was on a cliff overlooking the ocean. It sounds so silly but the ocean really looked like sparkling diamonds, I can't even describe how gorgeous it was. We also hung out with friends at the Dublin zoo, went to a playground on the grounds of a castle, fed ducks at a pond by my sister's house, went to a famous pub, and went to another pub in the center of Dublin for Irish singing and dancing. See, aren't you proud of us? (we left the kids with a sitter for the pubs) It's hard on "vacation" (is it really a vacation when you have small children? It's really more a relocation) to juggle getting out and about and the kids schedules, and I am all for messing with the schedules every now and then but if the kids aren't rested and behaving no one is having fun. Our kids did so great though, Caroline went several days with no nap and was delightful and fun and loved being out and about and would just sleep in the next morning a little later. Caleb, well Caleb was a bit of a stinker, my sisters house is spacious in that we all had our own rooms but you could hear everyone so we couldn't really let him cry that much for naps and at night. He caught on pretty quickly to that and started taking 20 minute naps and waking up 4 or 5 times at night. It was like having a newborn, it got pretty frustrating towards the end of the trip, especially since he sleeps through the night at home. He was in a great mood though, as long as you weren't trying to make him sleep, and when we were out he just slept in the ergo carrier on Brians back. It's a good thing he is so cute.

My sister is such a great mom, she was so laid back and such a gracious host. You would think this was her 5th child not her first. And Joshua is a cutie, sweet, GOOD baby. He just eats and sleeps and smiles No fussing, no crying just a happy, chubby little guy who was content to share all his toys with his cousins and let Caroline poke him in the eye and take his pacifier whenever she wanted to. We loved being with my sister and Jeff and seeing their beautiful home, visiting the church where Jeff is a Pastor, meeting there friends and seeing what their life is like. I hate that she lives so far away from me but I feel a little better about it having seen it all firsthand and meeting all of her very nice friends.

Our trip back, well, it was just about the worst case scenario. From door to door it took 25 hours, just about everything that could have gone wrong went wrong, the airline was ridiculous, a crazy lady told me to "shut that kid up so she could hear herself think" about Caroline who only cried about 5 minutes combined the whole trip home even though she was beyond exhausted. I lost it and yelled back, it wasn't pretty. The whole day was so awful and once we finally made it to JFK all the flights were done for the day so we ended up renting a car and drove home, got back at 2:30am. I have never been so happy to be anywhere as I was to walk in the door of our home. It took a few days to shake it all off, but we are all recovered, back on our schedules and missing our Irish relatives. When I upload the pictures it shows up in my post as code so I can't label them. Does anyone else have that problem or know how to fix it? We had about 300, here are a few...