So sorry

What have you been up to?

Well, the reason for my lack of updates can be blamed, in part, on my current company-- my beloved aunts Janette and Jaye. It is their first time abroad, and I was blessed to accompany them on a three-day jaunt outside Dublin (HOORAY!) to the West of Ireland: Galway, Westport, and many rural mountainous, sheep-filled sights in Connemara.

Our personal tour guide was Sister Alice Wittenbach, a neighbor of Janette and Jaye's from Grand Rapids. We bunked in her thatched roof cottage (oh-how-QUAINT!) in the village of Tully Cross, pop. 35: three pubs, one church. Sister Alice chauffered us around on the only-wide-enough-for-a-donkey-cart roads, and stopped every ten feet or so to show us the beach, the water, the mountains; sheep, cows, and goats.

My favorite points in the trip were, in descending order: Kylemore Abbey and the jam-making Benedictine nuns (I'm thinking of retiring to their order after Andrew finishes his PhD.-- what could be better than hanging out with your friends in the woods all day making jam for Jesus?); the day I ate smoked salmon from Lisdoonvarna and crab from Kinvarra in the same day; and walking around the windy streets of Galway wandering into the sweater shops.

Oh, one more thing: at one of the Tully Cross pubs, I had the pleasure of meeting Drunk and Crazy Danielle, formerly from Hohokus, NJ. Who knows what sins she committed in America, but at the tender age of 13, her parents shipped her over to Ireland to go to school at the Kylemore Abbey school. She hopped out the window, married a Tully-Crossian, and now has SEVEN children between the ages of 13 and 1. Did I mention that Danielle was only about 32 years old? Yeah, she's so Catholic she makes Mel Gibson look liberal.

While I was gone, one of my dearest friends, Chris Devlin (nee Fellrath), gave birth to her first child-- a girl, Brooklyn Rose. I wish her, husband James, and baby luck and love! Slainte!