Easter, Visit with Friends, and other fun stuff

Well Hello, I hope everyone is enjoying your week thus far and getting ready for the Holiday, here we have a 5 day holiday.  They honor Good Friday, Easter, and Easter Monday, Germany will pretty much be closed down for a 5 day weekend and most Dr. offices take the opportunity and close down for 2 weeks around this time and take a holiday.

Any way, we had a rough start to our weekend, Ivy woke up from her nap on Friday with a fever and was very lethargic , so she sat on the couch didn't eat and we watched Cinderella.  Saturday she felt better but still had a low grade fever and her stomach was upset(hence the diapers just in case) so we took it easy and boiled and dyed Easter Eggs.  I am disappointed I was so into watching her I didn't get any pictures of her gluing the bunny faces on but here is what I did get.

Ivy picked out this kit when we went grocery shopping, it had 5 colors, 12 stickers to decorate the eggs, 4 rabbit faces to glue on the eggs, and 3 shrink wraps.

 

 Ivy being Silly

 It takes a lot of concentration to put stickers on eggs!

 The finished product!

 

That evening for dinner I decided to try an Asian recipe I found on Pinterest, I made chicken spring rolls and 2 different dipping sauces. Kevin and I both were impressed at how well they tasted.



 

Sunday morning with Ivy feeling better we got on an early train and headed to Strasbourg for the Day/Night To meet Andy and Marsha Costello, good friends of the family.  They were on a river cruise and had some free time to stop and have lunch and spend the afternoon together. 

 



We enjoyed our visit with them and we hope they have a great time on the rest of their river cruise. After parting our ways we met up with a friend and old colleague of Kevin's from Colorado who now lives in Strasbourg.  We went to dinner at their house and they have a daughter a year younger then Ivy , as you can imagine they had a great time together and we had and enjoyable evening as well.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Easter, we are headed to Basel, Switzerland for 4 days first thing in the morning. I hope to post about our trip early next week.

St. Patrick's Day in Dublin

Kevin and I had really wanted to spend St. Patrick's Day in Dublin and see how the Irish celebrate, so we booked a trip for the 13th-18th.   We had a wonderful time and enjoyed the trip, the weather could have been better but hey, what can you expect from Ireland this time of year. 

We arrived on Friday the 13th pretty early, so we had time to head out and do some exploring before dinner so we decided to checkout the Guinness Storehouse.  Sadly, I lost a lot of photos from the first day and a half (long story) but one of Kevin's co-workers had the software to recover some of what we lost.  Unfortunately there was a video of Ivy he couldn't recover and it breaks my heart because it's one that I would have loved to share with all of you, either way I still have nice memories to share with you.

  Needless to say Ivy enjoyed the Guinness storehouse more than we ever thought she would.  Excuse the pics because they are dark but I didn't think to put my flash on before heading into the building.

Kevin and Ivy in front of the Guinness sign

Ivy doing her thing

 

 Family photo

 Ivy posing with the advertisement animals

 Kevin and Ivy enjoying a drink together after the tour

 

The next day we took it easy since it was cold and Ivy and I were pretty tired.  St. Patrick's Cathedral was right around the corner from our hotel so we visited the Cathedral, took a tour and afterwards let Ivy play in the small playground. 

 

Since we were all exhausted we went back to the hotel to nap before venturing out to the to see the boat races.  Now we only saw one since it took 30 minutes in between races for them to start the next one but it was an enjoyable event.  We watched UCD vs Trinity and we stood at the beginning but we read in the paper the next day that Trinity won.

  Than we headed off to let Ivy ride some rides before heading to an early dinner since we had to get up early for a day tour.

 

The next morning we got up super early to catch a tour bus at 6:50 AM to the Cliffs of Moher and the Burren. I have to say Ivy was a super trooper on this tour; we spent most of the day on the bus taking all these little stops on the way to and from the Cliffs.  We enjoyed the trip but honestly we wished we had more time at the Cliffs and the Burren.. The Cliffs were 5 miles long and they only gave you 1 hour and 30 minutes to enjoy them and 15 minutes at the Burren. We were very fortunate the sun was out and the weather was beautiful while we were at the Cliffs, such a breath taking view!

The Cliffs o f Moher

The Burren



 

The Next day was another leisurely day and after breakfast we checked out the Dublina Viking and medieval museum.  This was a very hands on museum and is great for children, of course Ivy had a blast and we enjoyed it as well.  

 

After taking a nap we headed over to the festivities where we enjoyed St. Patrick's festival  music and dancing, Ivy enjoyed a huge park, more rides, dinner,  and some street performances which Ivy refers to as " the Dresses."  I have never seen her so excited over something like this before in my life.  They  also  appeared in the parade the next day and she went nuts!!!

 

 

Finally, St. Patrick's day arrived and since it was our last day and we had to catch an early flight we had a nice slow paced enjoyable day. After breakfast we took a 5 minute walk to Christ Church and walked through before heading to the parade and getting a good spot so Ivy could see.  While we waited for the parade to start Ivy took a nice nap in her stroller and she woke up just in time for the parade. The parade was unique in it's own way and we all enjoyed watching it, Kevin even met a local celebrity while waiting for the parade to start.

 

 

Afterwards the hotel had music and food, we went back (which seemed to be the popular thing to do as it was pretty crowded) and listen to music and had a few drinks and relaxed, before heading out for dinner. We had a great time and were pretty tired at the end of the trip but it was well worth it!!

 

I have a few posts I would like to share with you over the next week or 2 so please check back!!  I hope you all are having a great start to spring.