Happy Birthday Cora!

Cora turned 3 years old on Friday! She has been so excited for it to be her birthday.... she just couldn't wait! We had a little early birthday party / Father's Day celebration with Kissie, Pata, Shad and Jen on Monday night. Cora loved her new shirts and bath toys from Shad and Jen.
And she especially loved her new bedding from Kissie and Pata! She was so excited to see her brand new bed. And it does cheer up her room quite a bit-- it's very cute.
The only thing that didn't go over so well was blowing out the candles. We thought we'd let her do a trial run-- but she was terrified of them! Oh well, maybe next year!
Friday morning Cora got to put on her birthday crown-- it says "It's my birthday" on it, and she got lots of birthday wishes throughout the day.
We met up with Kevin for a pizza picnic lunch.....
Visited the Children's Museum, at Cora's request-- she chose it over the zoo! I was surprised, but we haven't been there for quite a long time, and the girls had a great time. We'll have to get there more often, Violet can do so much more there than she used to be able to.
We picked up balloons on the way home, and when Kevin got home, we had a special birthday dinner of strawberry pancakes, cinnamon syrup, sausage, and cherries. Cora opened a birthday gift from Violet, and then got to go upstairs to see her specially decorated birthday door and.... her new bike!
Cora was so excited to finally see it in person-- she had caught a couple of glimpses of the box before her big day. We took it outside and she did pretty well pedaling. I'm sure it will take a little while longer for her pedaling to become more fluid-- she gets caught up on the back brake concept-- but she's doing great!

We ended with a brownie cake, and Cora still did NOT want to blow out candles. Oh well!
Cora stayed up late to watch part of the Dora movie we rented. And then the best end to a really fun birthday day was....
a HUGE bright double rainbow that we saw from our back porch, right before bedtime. We could see both ends of the rainbow, and though the picture isn't spectacular, the rainbows were pretty amazing. Happy Birthday Cora!

January 14th

We went to the doctor today and heard the new baby's heartbeat! Violet didn't care one bit, she just wanted to be under the doctor's feet. The rest of us were thrilled to know everything is going well. I've been feeling great, just tired. It was nice to meet my new doctor. He seems really great, and I like the way his practice is set up. Cora keeps talking about the baby in my tummy and how it will come out after Christmas!

Liberty Park

Friday afternoon we spent a few hours at Liberty Park. The park is huge! It has a large duck pond where you can also rent paddle-boats, the aviary and a folk museum are there, as well as two large play structures, a splash pad, and most fun, a big water play area. We've been there a few times before, but never when it's been warm enough to play in the water. They have a series a little kiddie feet-deep canals with bridges, waterfalls, canyons, and a bigger wading area. I should have brought a swim diaper-- Violet would have been even more ecstatic. She loves wate, and had a fun time, even if she had to hold my hand the whole time so she didn't sit down. Cora had lots of fun too, it's definitely a place we'll have to revisit. We also lucked out that a fire truck was visiting that day and sprayed the crowd with water for at least 20 minutes. The girls didn't want to get in the spray, but had fun watching the hose spray all over.

Kurt's Commissioning

Thursday we went to Kurt's commissioning at the new Alumni Building at BYU. It was neat to see the military ceremony associated with his advancement. And, lucky for us (just because of the girls) it was nice and short, so we avoided major breakdowns that could have interrupted everything! We had a nice little walk around campus and spent the rest of the day relaxing. Kurt is headed off to training in August for 5 months, and the he and Jen will move to Fort Bragg in North Carolina. We will miss them!

More Piggy Pictures

Cora was so excited to wear this pink outfit-- she wanted to wear it every day last week, but it was much too cold (we've had major thunderstorms every day for over a week!). She was also thrilled that her hair fits into two BIG piggies now. She kept telling me all day how big her piggies were. And she loves how they swing she she turns her head back and forth!

Cora's First "Real" Haricut

Cora was so excited to go get her haircut on Friday. She talked about it all week long! She's had a lot of things to look forward to now, with her haircut, Grandma and Grandpa coming next week, family dinner tonight, and her birthday. When these events are occurring is an hourly topic at our house.

Cora was a little nervous when we got to Cookie Cutters, but it is a super kid-friendly place (and she got an extra $2 off because it was her birthday month), so it was a good first haircut experience for her. She got to pick her car to sit in, pick a movie to watch (Dora), hold the movie case, and pick her sucker and balloon color on the way out. They even had a slide for the kids to play on before and after. It'll be nice to have her hair all even and trimmed, I think we're going to grow it out for a while now!

The before shot:

Church History Library

Tuesday night we got to go to the new Church History Library. They did an open house for employees and their families. Luckily we went to the barbecue first, before the rain started. They had a music group there and Cora had a lot of fun dancing on the grasses to the guitar, fiddle, and mandolin. The walk through the new building was long, but it was neat to see the rooms that they use to store, restore, and preserve film, audio, pictures, books, and more.

This is from lds.org:

The 230,000-square-foot library contains a wide variety of historical collections, including:

• 270,000 books, pamphlets, magazines, manuals, etc.
• 500,000 historical photographs, posters, maps, etc.
• 23,000 audio and video recordings.
• 120,000 local histories for LDS Church units.
• 150,000 journals, diaries, papers, and manuscripts.
• 20,000 rolls of microfilm.
• 3.5 million patriarchal blessings received by LDS Church members.

The building is across from the Church Office Building and the RS Building. They have a lobby area with some of the documents from the collection on display, which I think is open to the public.

Ireland-- Day 8

Whew. Last day!

We spent an inordinate amount of time getting to our first site. The bus driver told us she'd let us know where to get off. We knew it was a little far away, but when we were really started to wonder after we were getting into suburb-y looking area. She forgot about us! We were so far past it, she said we could just stay on the bus and take the full loop back. We declined, and took a taxi. Oh well, it was our only poor customer service experience in Ireland... besides that grouchy old man at the Cliffs of Moher cruise who told me how 'clever' I was that I had lost our ticket... and perhaps that was deserved?

So we finally got to Kilmainham Goal (Jail). It was interesting to see this prison, built in 1796, as it was one of the first 'reformed' prisons in the British Isles. Meaning, it was one of the first that separated out men from women and child to prevent abuse, as well as some other important changes made to make prison life more humane.
However, like most of our other tours, even more interesting was hearing the guide explain how the jail fit into Irish history. The tour was really the story of the Irish fight for independence. Many of the people who fought for independence we held or executed here.

Our fabulous tour guide. The Irish really know how to tell a story.
After the prison, we met upwith Keyton, Liz, Eme, and Jarom. It was surprisingly easy to meet, even without cell phones... maybe I rely on mine too much? We grabbed lunch and headed to Trinity College for a tour.
Our tour guide was a college student, and it was an interesting tour, but a little hard to concentrate because it was hot! I guess it was super unusual weather for Ireland. We loved it, but weren't too prepared for it.

The highlight of the tour was going inside the library to see the special display of the Book of Kells... a decorated copy of the four Gospels written on vellum in the late 8th century by Irish monks. The exhibit showed the process of making the vellum (calfskin), dyes, binding the books, etc. And then they had two of the volumes on display. It was pretty neat. The volumes are known as the finest piece of art from the Dark Ages.

Eme, me, Kevin, Liz (and belly-- isn't it cute?) and Jarom in front of the belltower.
After Trinity College we took a walk to see some of the local churches...
And even with Kevin's protests, I had to take a picture of him on Kevin street.
The sad part of the day was saying goodbye to Keyton, Liz, Emeline, and Jarom. We stopped for what was supposed to be a quick dinner, which turned into a forever dinner. It took so long Keyton actually had to leave and miss dinner to get their car out before the parking garage closed... but there's very little street parking in Dublin, so he was just going to circle around the block and find us at a designated street corner. I was so worried we'd never find him again-- with crazy, busy, and unfamiliar roads and no cell phone communication. Going around the block took about 30 minutes... but we finally spotted him and loaded the kids in the car and had the quickest goodbye ever. Especially considering we won't see them until next summer at the earliest! Oh well, we had a super fun 3 days together, even with a quick goodbye.

We had such a fun trip-- thanks to super cheap plane tickets, frequent flier miles, grandparents willing to spend concentrated time with Cora and Violet, dad's Hilton points, Rick Steves, Kevin's good driving skills, my trip planning, kind B&B hosts, storyteller tour guides, and my brother and sister-in-law willing to hop a flight and meet us in beautiful Ireland.

One more beach video

Ireland-- Day 7

The last three days of our trip we stayed in a fancy hotel in Dublin, thanks to my mom and dad generously letting us use a bunch of their Hilton points. The hotel was super nice and had a yummy breakfast, but really the best part was its location-- so close to everything we wanted to see in Dublin! There was only one site really out of the way that we took a bus too (or tried to take a bus too, more on that later).

We did take a bus to church too, though, Sunday morning. We lucked out in being able to find the church building, LDS.org didn't list a specific address, just a street. Luckily a nice bus driver helped us out and we got there in plenty of time. I love going to church while traveling. It's such a nice way to see real people in the country, and get a glimpse of life beyond tourism where you are visiting (besides personal worship...). It was a nice-sized ward with a lot of friendly people, and we got to hear from a bunch of them since they were doing Fast and Testimony meeting that day.
Sunday afternoon we headed to Dublin castle. I was expecting a true castle, but it was really a more modern (1800's) building built on the site of a Viking fortress. The most interesting part of the tour wasn't so much what we saw, but hearing the guides explain more about Ireland's history, especially about Dublin's history and British rule. Specifically, it was where the British handed power over to the Irish in 1922. They still use the building today for state functions.

The old Viking wall. Most of this structure was destroyed during a big fire. Our guide explained that during the fire, one of the towers was purposely destroyed to try to prevent the fire from spreading, but the charge was set off too close to the explosives storage area, so much more of the fortress was destroyed than expected.


The King's throne. Young women were presented to the king or viceroy before they could attend the dances to make sure they were of the proper status to participate.
After the castle, we stopped by the National Museum of Archeology. It was interesting to see the artifacts collected from a bunch of the other places we had visited in Ireland. After that, we took a long walk and had a relaxing evening in.

Ireland-- Day 6

In the morning we parted ways with Keyton and Liz-- they went up north and we went East to Dublin. On the way to Dublin, we stopped at Newgrange, another one of the highlights of our trip. It was a little out of the way, so we weren't sure if we should fit it in, but I'm so glad we did! It was the oldest thing we saw in Ireland, dating from 3200 BC. In fact, the ruins there are older than the pyramids.

We went to the site at Knowth first...
These mounds are tombs that have passageways that align so that on the Fall and Spring equinoxes, the sun shines down the passageway to the center of the chanber. At this site, we couldn't walk in, but we did take a peek in and walked on top. It was so long ago, no one really knows all the details of why they would build them, but they guess it was to help keep track of the seasons and perhaps to help spirits reach heaven and as a form of worship.

Amazingly, the mounds were so well built that they are perfectly preserved-- no water leakage, no structural damage to the passageways, nothing. The passageways are covered by layers of sod, dirt and rocks, that perfectly distributed the weight and sloughed rainwater out and away from the passageway. Surrounding the mounds are huge rocks with carvings on them. Studies have shown the the huge rocks came from an area something like 40 km north of the site, and the white rocks came from an area something like 80 km south of the site.

Whatever they built them for, it was amazing to think how much time and effort was involved in the building process. These were people who spent most of their time building shelter and gathering food. That they would gather huge stones from different parts of Ireland and haul them and tons of dirt up on a hill, keep track of the sun patterns, and put the materials together perfectly in an intricate way without modern machinery or science says a lot about their devotion to their family members who passed on and their gods. It make me wonder at what people in our society, 5000 years later, would do for their religion and families?
Next we went to the site at Newgrange, a little more restored and open than Knowth. We got to go inside, down a narrow passageway to the chamber... which was under a 20 foot high dome. Good thing we're not claustrophibic! Here, on the shortest day of the year, Dec. 21st, the sun's rays hit the inner chamber. They think perhaps that the dead were put in here and when the sun hit, their souls were transported to the afterlife. The guide turned off the lights and showed us, with an electric light, how the sun would shine in. I guess there's a lottery you can enter to be one of the lucky ones to be there each year and really see it.

This is the passageway.
This is the outside. The white rocks with the granite stone pattern has been reconstructed-- just a guess of how it might have looked. Over time, the dirt had sloped down and flattened out the shape of the mound. They might not have even known about the sunray deal, except when they created the indent to make and easier access (before the people climbed over the large front stone, but they didn't want tourists to do that and wear down the markings) they found the top 'window' that lets the light through.
They really have no idea what these markings mean. They could be maps, astronomy charts, religious signs....
I loved the 'tree tunnels' we went through to get to Knowth.



After this afternoon trip, we dropped off the rental car. We put 1,487 km (934 miles) on the car in 5.5 days! And that's even a more impressive number considering the types of roads we were driving on-- narrow windy roads, not 75 mph freeways!

Ireland-- Day 5

How would you like this view to wake up to every morning? We had a lovely room at our B&B in Dingle, with this view out our window. The beginning of a great day!

The day started off with a drive, route courtesy of Keyton and Liz's GPS system. She did a pretty good job-- only a few funny detours :). Our first stop was Bunratty Castle. Rick doesn't even deign to discuss this castle-- just says it's a touristy site better to be skipped. But we had a fun time and the kids loved it too. It was a decorated castle and town (think Williamsburg) and they did a pretty good job. I guess Rick isn't always spot-on :).
Our next stop was supposed to be one of the highlights of our whole trip. Sadly, it was pretty miserable for me. The Cliffs of Moher are five miles of soaring cliffs as high as 650 feet about the ocean. Supposedly the best way to see them is by boat. The website claims that sea-sickness isn't even an issue to be considered. Perhaps I should insist on a revision? It was beautiful, but I was so sick and everyone else appreciated the scenery much more than I was able to. Oh well.
Um, this was at the beginning of the ride, before the humongous waves and spinning in the water for an extra 45 minutes added to the ride while we waited for the previous boat to refuel.
The awesome rock formations by the pier.
Luckily my stomach calmed down after the ride in time eat eat yummy pizza and we settled in for the night at our hotel.

I hope this picture conveys my reasoning behind feeling moments of terror while Kevin was driving. I think he was trying to get as close to the greenery wall as possible ! Probably a good thing, considering the narrowness of the roads I suppose. These tiny windy roads had a speed limit of 100 km/hr, which Kevin considered a goal, and I considered a death wish. I must admit that it was really good for us that Kevin was driving and did do such an excellent job at adapting to the road conditions. If I was the driver, we'd still be back in Ireland navigating the roads at 20 km/hr!