The Growing Caldwell Family

After months of planning and anticipation, our big adventure was coming to an end.  We loaded our suitcases with Tato's, Hula Hoops, and Cadbury chocolate to bring our new found snack loves home! My seat buddies! We laughed at the guys in front of us who were constantly waking the Asian woman in the aisle seat with their liquor purchases and subsequent restroom breaks and the guy behind us gave us a big chuckle when he asked his wife if she had another one of those rectal suppositories!  After a short delay in D.C. due to serious lightning and fear our flight would be canceled, we were excited when they started boarding us on this plane, even if we had to walk outside in the rain to get on! I thought it could be my lucky day when the gate agent joyfully shouted, "Seat Change!" when she scanned my boarding pass, but just a correction as this was a different plan than we were originally scheduled on! Lots of great memories and fun times bonding with my Irish geezers! Drivin

The Castle Hotel was a quaint hotel built by combining four Georgian houses to make one hotel. The halls had some quirky slants, but the staff were friendly and they could accommodate all four of us in one room, something a lot of city hotels couldn't do. They also provided breakfast and although it wasn't as delectable as the Bayview Hotel, it had a machine to produce pancakes at the touch of a button! We said goodbye to Franny when we made it to Dublin as Aaron, justifiably, did not want to navigate the city by car and have to pay for parking all over.  We had the nicest uber driver take us to St. Patrick's Cathedral and he taught us a bit about how life had been in Ireland since COVID - not enough housing, high inflation, vacant jobs, we have a lot of similarities! Amazing to think about St. Patrick bringing Christianity to Ireland and baptizing people in the 5th century! A playground for the little ones of today, too! I was mesmerized by the floor inside! I love this pa

 Our last two days in Ireland we spent in Dublin. There were a lot of things to choose from to see and I think we picked things that fit our varied interests. There would definitely be more to see on a future visit! Our first stop was Book of Kells If I'm being honest, this felt like a stop more for Aaron, but the exhibit was done really well and I enjoyed it.  There were large panels so you could really see parts of how the monks copied the gospels to make a sort of traveling book to be used in mission work.  Something else that is really cool is that the monks who worked on the Book of Kells were at a monastery on an island off the coast of Scotland called Iona. I went there as a college student studying psychology and geology abroad and had a wonderful experience there.  Being honest, the kids were only slightly interested and would have walked through in just a few minutes! They were troopers knowing how much Aaron loves this stuff.  Most of the books are removed so that they c