Ireland

Ben and I and my mom went to Ireland.  I've wanted to go for a long time.  I'm glad I saw it.  It truly is beautiful and the Irish people so gracious.  The first two days were spent in Dublin.  A great majority of the first day was trying to stumble around with jet lag.  The second day we took a bus tour around the city and stopped off at St. Stephen's Green and took a look around.  It was a beautiful park. 

Like how they mind the "keep off the grass" notice?

This was a scene from the town of Killarney.  It was my favorite of the towns we visited.  I think you can see why.

This is a chapel at Kylemoore Abbey that we saw.  It was beautiful and holy.  This chapel was built by a grieving husband for his wife who died of dysentery when she was 45 years old.  They had 9 kids.  You can imagine that this was a real labor of love.

The Kylemoore residence

us on the flight going to Ireland

When we were in Dublin I had planned for us to go to church there.  This is us in church.

This is a favorite picture of mom on our trip.  We saw lots and lots of sheep over there.

If I look carefree, that's because I was at the time.

They had green pastures, but also lots of wooded areas.

We saw lots of enormous trees like this one.  Oh the stories these trees could tell.

In Killarney we went by Muckrosse house.

You don't go to Ireland for the food.  That's for sure, but it was interesting.  We didn't eat much meat over there and not much dairy.  We had a lot of soup and Irish soda bread though.  When it's raining, a good bowl of soup sounds good.  Here is leek and potato soup.

Starting School

Gwen beginning 3rd grade

Zeke is in 1st

My precious three

Our neighbors

We went swimming a few days before school starting.

Now I spend my days taking this little girl to the library and watching her puppet shows.

End of Summer

Summer, you take my breath away with your everyday moments of laughter with the kids and your scorching hot days.  Another summer is almost at an end.  

One day I took the kids to the zoo.  It was very hot that day so we only stayed for a couple of hours, but we will be back.  Here's Gwen feeding birds. 

Our Sunday School class we teach had an assignment to build heaven using paper plates and straws.  I laughed and laughed about that until the kids got imaginative....

Here are the trees in heaven.  They made fruit and everything for them.

Here's the throne of God and the river that runs from it.  Um... I was very impressed!

Here's the finished product with jewel encrusted gates (paper plates) and trees and throne with the river that runs from it.  These first and second graders are amazing!  Lesson- never underestimate kids.

Zeke had to try out the throne of God!

The girls being "ninjas"

 We have gotten a lot of excitement from watching the skies around here lately.  We've seen this blimp a few times and a hot air balloon.  You would think the Lord was coming back by the reaction of my kids when they see these!  

This is why we went to the zoo that day.  For me to see the new koala.  It's so snuggly adorable!!!  My theory is that it must be really low stress to be a koala.  They sleep 20 hours a day... I mean, how stressful is that?

 I've started working on potty training Romy this summer.  Here she is eating grapes on the potty.  She's a mess...

 Gwen recently trusted Christ and was baptized.  Here she is putting her handprint to the wall at church.

I went to a leadership retreat and this was a stained glass window they are going to build at this church.  Lovely!  I love stained glass!

More of the zoo.

In our "spare" time we painted my bedroom gray and I bought a new comforter for our bed.  Here's the picture of the one I chose.  This isn't my bed, but still, I'm loving this comforter.