It's the Holiday Season!

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving in Michigan. Dave's cousin Michael and Michael's girlfriend Tonia hosted a fabulous dinner - Nolan loved the sweet potatoes!

We put up our Christmas tree yesterday and Nolan was mesmerized with the colored strands of lights as we put them on the tree. Now we'll just have to avoid him pulling the tree over! We purposely put the non-breakable ornaments on the bottom half of the tree.

Nolan is going to have an aunt!

My brother Bob and his girlfriend Laurie got engaged on Saturday! We're so thrilled for them! I'm excited to be getting a sister-in-law and Nolan is excited to be getting his first aunt! Laurie is such a great person and I've never seen Bob happier.

Ireland Trip

Dave and I had a fabulous vacation! We saw a ton in five days. We landed at Shannon Airport, then immediately drove to the Cliffs of Moher, then drove back towards the aiport to tour the Bunratty Castle. We crashed really hard the first night (slept 12 hours). It's tough adjusting to the six hour time difference that first day. We spent the second day driving the Ring of Kerry. Dave drove the whole trip and did a really great job driving on the left side of road and dealing with the ton of roundabouts (aka rotaries) in Ireland. It was refreshing not dealing with many traffic lights. The roundabouts weren't bad at all after getting used to reading the signs. The Ring of Kerry is beautiful. We had fun stopping at a couple of cute towns along the drive. We stayed at a B&B in Killarney that night. On the third day we drove from Killarney to Galway. On the way we stopped at my good friend Lora's grandparents' house. We had a really nice visit with them...I had never met them. They live in a really small town out in the country about 45 minutes outside of Galway. They were so hospitable. Lora's grandma made us an Irish "fry" consisting of scrambled eggs, bacon (reminds me of what we think of as ham), sausage, and black pudding (aka blood sausage??!!). The black pudding kind of freaked me out, so I took one bite to be polite. Lora's grandma also insisted that I have some Jameson whiskey...pretty funny!

The last couple days of the trip were spent exploring Galway and Connemara. We saw a lot of countryside and the driving got interesting. We're talking roads that are 1.5 lanes wide. So basically when you came head on to another car, one person had to pull over to let the other pass....especially if you came head on to a semi-truck...kind of scary! We got stopped a few times by sheep and cattle crossing the road. There were sheep practically everywhere you looked in Ireland! It surprised me how big the homes are in Ireland...no matter where you were. We stayed at a castle in Connemara which we enjoyed a lot. We somehow managed to score a corner "tower" room, so the room was rounded and huge!

I did better than I thought being away from Nolan. By the time we were on the flight home though I was getting extremely antsy to see him! Nolan had so much fun with Grandma Becky and Grandpa George. Grandpa took him on two stroller rides a day and they did lots of playing and laughing! Dave and I are very grateful that they were willing to come out for the week to watch him.

Nolan is doing great. He says "ma-ma, da-da, and ba-ba" but no real correlation to what they mean. He's starting to learn how to wave hi and bye. He's really enjoying table food and we keep trying new things.

It's hard to believe that next week is Thanksgiving already! We're heading to Michigan to visit Dave's Aunt Linda, Uncle Lou, and his cousin Michael.

That's all for now!