backlog: may 2010

welcome to may, friends.

you've seen those "hatch your own butterfly" containers, right?  we have one for praying mantis'.  and we sent in our voucher for our mantis egg case, and they send it back to us telling us they've run out and to send it in next year.  LAME. so we went outside and found our own cases.  we brought home four or five of them, and they all hatched at different times, so for a month or so, we had a constant container full of teeny, tiny babies.  i think i liked it more than anyone else.  but i'm a nerd like that.

look how itty bitty!

and this ladybug is my favorite ladybug i've ever seen.

here we have siah looking moody

beeb 'sorting' the recycling for me. (at least it's all clean, right?)

henry being, well, henry.  and we still need a good nickname for henry...

this was at henry's mothers day program at school.  all the pictures the kids drew of their moms were up on the wall and the moms were supposed to go and pick out the one they thought was of them (the kids names weren't on them).  and i saw this one, fell in love with it and decided it was the greatest picture of any person i'd ever seen, ever. and low and behold, it was henry's drawing of me - complete with two red bows in my hair and a big warty looking thing on the tip of my nose.  good grief i love this boy.

mark's job occasionally offers him some pretty sweet benefits, like awesome tickets to yankees games (and we all know how much mark loves the yankees, right?)  here's henrys first mlb game and guess who is the yankees new number one fan is?  it can get a little tense in this house with a serious yankees fan and a serious red sox fan.  we believe someday henry will see the light.

isn't he too old for shenanigans like these?

b likes to empty out my fabric bins and sit in them.  but she always cleans up after herself - good girl.

The Land of Ire

how much did we love ireland?  more than mark loves chocolate or i love sleeping.  now that's saying something.

upon arriving in dublin, we promptly hopped in the wrong sides our rental car and drove out of there on the wrong side of the road.  needless to say, it was a harrowing experience for the first day... and i was only a passenger.  the cars are small, and an average 2 lane road is about the width of a king size bed.  i'm not exaggerating.   ok i am, but only a little.  

our first stop was to kilkenny which we figured was pronounced kilk-enny, but no.  it's kill-kenny and i still wonder if the similarity to south park is coincidence...  anyhoo,  i don't have any photos of kilkenny but it's a lovely little town, just don't stay in the place we did.  that's the place mark had a traditional irish breakfast and (not surprisingly) the worst food we had on the trip.  

on to the Rock of Cashel

down the hill is Hore Abby.  yes, just how it sounds.  hore abby.

this is where the hore's slept. haha!

oh look at me being all silly.

from here, we went south to Kinsale in County Cork where we learned loads of interesting history and ate some fantastic food to counterbalance the really bad.

aaaand it looks like i don't have many photos of kinsale either.  but believe me, it's a very cute, quaint seaside town.

and just look how big their leaves get!

these yellow flowers were growing everywhere - covering hillsides so completely it looked like someone had laid out giant yellow tarps for miles and miles.

oh look! here's Kinsale form a distance

does your gps ever lead you astray? i mean, really astray?  ours did on the way to Kenmare.  we drove through miles and miles of hilly farmland on unmarked dirt roads for what seemed like hours all the while hearing our nav say "recalculating. recalculating".  garmin = fail.

not that it was such a bad thing, we got to see places like this and explore places we never would have seen otherwise.  have i mentioned how beautiful ireland is? do i need to?

the only thing that is not beautiful is the roads.  like this two lane road up and down a mountain.

but then you pass the garbage truck and try to stay on the narrow road since you can't take your eyes off the scenery.  i wish it hadn't been so hazy, these mountains were so unique and strangely rugged.

welcome to kenmare! i don't have any photos of this town either! what's the matter with me?

but i do have this cool one of the foliage around a 3,000 year old stone circle (think stonehenge on a tiny scale)

ooooh, what does it mean?

best street sign ever.  someone even drew a little person inside the car as they plumet to their death.  did you notice the palm trees?  yes! palm trees in ireland - it's actually a temperate place, just not warm temperate.

traveling north through the lakes of Killarney

 this photo always reminds me of

this photo

now to our very favorite

Dingle!!

and what better way to welcome you than this?

what i'd really like to do is insert every photo i have from dingle into this post because this area is just unbearably  beautiful and full of ancient history and structures and ocean so blue you'd think you were in the tropics.

farmers still farm this land that goes right up to the edges of these sheer cliffs that lead right down to the ocean.

 throughout ireland are ancient communities that lived in these stone igloos.

i think the view must have taken the edge off living in a stone hut

 we drove the peninsula once on our own and also took a tour bus for another round.  the guide made a point to show us the land they filmed 'far and away' on and also the house tom and nicole stayed in while they were filming.  really tour guide?  that's what's noteworthy?

 looking down onto the dingle peninsula

Gallarus Oratory built 1,300 years ago with stacked rocks, no mortar, and is still waterproof

 bye bye dingle town!

brandon bay

We spent the night in Portmagee to make the early morning boat to Skellig Michael.  As portmagee is very small we went across the inlet to Valentia Island for the afternoon where we hiked up to a WWII fort on a cliff overlooking the ocean.

here's the start of the hike

and the top of the island at the fort (you'll see that in a sec)

now, i'm no ansel adams (obviously) and therefore, i can't manipulate my camera to give an accurate perspective of just how steep and sheer these cliffs are.  so, to borrow a saying from a friends father that he used to describe being at the top of Half Dome, "it makes your anal sphincter pucker".  very apropo here, too.

how typically irish is this?!

check out that road we walked up. geez.  it fades off into the extreme distance.

see the bridge?  on the other side is portmagee

this is a slate quarry that's no longer in use

sweet little flowers called sea pink

tetrapod tracks - 350 million years old by one of the first animals to walk on dry land. cool, no?  but i'm a nerd like that.

Skellig Michael

there really aren't words to describe a trip to skellig michael.  i'd venture toward awe-inspiring, humbling, breath-taking and spiritual.  without a doubt visiting this island is among the most memorable things i've ever done.  just thinking about approaching those sheer cliffs and climbing those steps still makes my heart race.  it was first inhabited by 6th century christian monks who sought isolation as a means to come closer to God.  the island is more than 700 feet tall and a mile around with a cluster of beehive huts where the monks lived, worshiped and buried their dead. 'chiseling the most rudimentary life out of solid rock, the monks lived a harsh lonely disciplined existence for more than 500 years.  they collected rainwater in cisterns and lived off fish and birds.  to supplement their meager existence, they gathered bird eggs and feathers to trade with passing boats for cereals, candles and animal hides.' read more about it here and here.

leaving the dock, see the fort on top of the island?  that's what we hiked to.

i don't know how, but we managed to get aboard the s.l.o.w.e.s.t. boat in ireland that day in some of the bitterest cold wind in recent history.  the ride over was extremely painful, but i forgot all about it as we approached the island. 

 see that little blue dot down there?  that's a boat and they have to steer these boats basically into a cave in constant choppy seas where we dock against a 15 foot sheer rock face with some slippery steps carved into it that we have to manage to climb onto amid all the rocking and try not to fall and get crushed between the rock and the boat.  all that adventure just to get ON the island.

if you look closely in the green area, you can see one of the three winding stairways that have been carved out of the stone that leads up to the stone buildings.

off we go!  halfway up the 600 steeeeep steps.  did i mention that people die here climbing this every year?  this place does not mess around, you have to watch every step you take.

this is the stairway that leads down thru the greenery on the above photo

the cemetary

what was i saying earlier about your anal sphincter? and look, you can see those steps again.

thousands of puffins nest on the island every year, they're so dopey and cute.

thanks ireland!

keep reading to see what happened in april!