More Adventures with Connor!

Since we didn't want to cook one June evening, and Haley was scampering about with her friends, and Zach was sleeping, we took a trip to The Venue Restaurant in Strandhill, County Sligo for lobster tails and other fine treats from the sea!  It is a lovely place and we had a very good time.

The boardwalk is lovely and there is a golf club right beside it.  Strandhill is a popular surfing venue as well.

See those cars parked on the sidewalk? That's how you do it in Ireland.  Remember, streests are narrow! 

Before dinner we also stopped in The Strand Bar and Restaurant and had a beverage. 

Close-up of my handsome boy!

View out the window of the restaurant.

Bog-Dog again and Rugby checks out my cell phone!

Haley's Graduation Dance

 Haley attended her graduation dance in July.  The dance is essentially an all-night affair, with the kids  catching a bus in the town near the school about 7 pm and the bus takes them to the venue, which was about an hour away.  They take the bus back to the town about 5 in the morning.  Yay....  Her date was a friend named Francie Flynn.  Love that name! 

This is Haley's close group of friends.  The five of them did things together all year.  They are: Laura Healy, Sinead Hughes, Lorraine Hesselin, and Caiomhe Gaffney.

Fishing with Connor and Haley

This adventure was one evening when Steve got off work.  We brought the dogs along and Rugby got rather stupid with the cows.  He ran through the fence, it startled us AND the cows, and Rugby did get an accidental kick from one of the cows, but it just glanced his side and he ran back over to us.  Chloe wisely left them alone.

Rugby relaxing after his battle with the cattle...

There were swans here too!

Adventures with Connor

So for several weeks this past summer Haley had a job at Abbott doing administrative work.  She really liked the people, but she was putting in a full work week so we didn't get to see much of her for a few weeks.  (She did learn that she doesn't want an office job!) 

I tried to keep Connor busy.  He was doing an online economics class, studying for the P-Cats, and lifting at the Longford Leisure Center.  He was also mowing the lawn in Steve's "lawn-mowin' shoes"!  Did not get a picture of Zach in his lawn mowing gear, though they did split the duty with Connor mowing the front and Zach mowing the back, and Zach wore the same shoes...

Since Connor and I had time on our hands, we spent a day at the beach in Sligo and then we took a day to go to Carrick on Shannon to walk around and see the sights.  It was a gorgeous day:  warm and sunny and a lovely blue sky with puffy white clouds! 

Here we are sitting on the pier on the River Shannon.

Swans and fuzzy teen swans!

The swan family went right underneath us!

We also stopped at a tiny Chapel.  Connor was reading the info when I took this one.

The information tells us it is the smallest chapel in Ireland and apparently the second smallest chapel in the world!  Edward Costello commissioned the Chapel in memory of his wife, Mary Josephine Costello upon her death at the age of 47 on October 6, 1877.  She was interred in the Chapel on April 22, 1879.  Edward died at the age of 68 on March 7, 1891 and was also interred in the Chapel.

Below is Mary Josephine's coffin.

 The more plain coffin is Edward's.

It was an interesting story and a lovely little Chapel. Below is a photograph of Edward's beloved wife, Mary Josephine.  After that, we walked around a bit more, got some ice cream and then drove back to Longford.  It was a wonderful day!

The Hag's Chair at Loughcrew

Remember in my post on Loughcrew when I said I would post a picture of me sitting in the Hag's Chair? Well here it is:

And  no, I DIDN'T feel like I belonged there!  I think what makes the picture so grand is the incongruity of ME sitting in a HAG'S chair.  Am I right??  Of course I am...

More Than a Year in Longford!

Well, now the site for my blog is just plain inaccurate!  I thought about starting another one for the second year in Longford, but does it really matter?!  I will just continue with this one.  We are still an American Family in Longford...

A lot has happened since the one year anniversary.  We went on a trip down south and saw numerous things, Haley had her graduation dance and her friends threw a grand party for her, we had our first guests over for a Barbeque, and we took a 4 week trip to the US to get  Haley and Connor to the University of Iowa for the start of the school year.  I will put in entries for these events,  complete with pictures and highlights - they will just be entered a bit untimely...

Zach and I have been back in Ireland since Wednesday morning.  Steve picked us up at 5 am!  We slept a lot that day.  It feels different because Haley isn't here with me.  I went to the grocery store and didn't buy apples, sandwich wraps, or Nutella.  It made me sad.  I saw kids waiting for the bus in their light blue shirts and their dark blue jumpers and I felt left out somehow.  I MISS HER!  I wandered into Haley's room and it was so empty.  I wandered into Connor's room and it seemed even emptier now that they are both in the US.  Sigh...

The real constant in my day to day activities these past 2 days is the dogs.  They have been quite happy to get back to their daily walks and they had a lovely afternoon in the dog spa.  When we walked at the Mall, lots of people said welcome back and essentially noticed that I had been gone, so it really felt like I belonged.  It's the little things that can make a day feel grand!