Beautiful Northern Ireland!

  Everyone in my family has a bit of wanderlust in them, but my brother, Nate, is the absolute king of travel and he makes the rest of us look like homebodies by comparison!   He had a goal to make it to 100 countries by the time he turned 50, which he accomplished and now he is going back to visit his favorite places and occasionally adding new destinations when it fits into his plans. So when he found out that we were visiting Northern Ireland on our trip (a place he'd never been), he spontaneously  added it onto his itinerary for a trip he was taking at the same time.   Where were the other destinations on his  trip to?   Cape Verde and the Azores in Portugal...you know right on the way to Northern Ireland!   Haha!  

Our overlap with Nate was about a day-and-a-half, so we reserved a spot for him to come along  with us on our day-long tour, which included  stops at Carrickfergus Castle, some Game of Thrones filming sites, and Giant's Causeway. 

You all probably didn't know this about me, but I am a bit of a geology nerd.  I took several geology classes in college and I LOVE visiting places in the world with unique geologic features.   Basically that means that Giant's Causeway was on the very top of my list of all the things to do in Northern Ireland and it did not disappoint.   I was nervous as we approached as it did not look like much from a distance, but up close it was as AMAZING as I had expected!    

Can you believe this place is real?!    😁

I was seriously enamored with this view and in awe at a great God who set into motion the natural processes that created such a masterpiece...

 I think I took more pictures here than at any other single location on this trip...

In case you're wondering how these striking hexagonal basalt columns just naturally formed on the Northern Irish coast, here is an excerpt from the UNESCO Heritage page about Giant's Causeway that can explain it way better than I ever could: 

"The Giant’s Causeway and Causeway Coast is a spectacular area of global geological importance on the sea coast at the edge of the Antrim plateau in Northern Ireland. The most characteristic and unique feature of the site is the exposure of some 40,000 large, regularly shaped polygonal columns of basalt in perfect horizontal sections, forming a pavement. This dramatic sight has inspired legends of giants striding over the sea to Scotland. Celebrated in the arts and in science, it has been a visitor attraction for at least 300 years and has come to be regarded as a symbol for Northern Ireland.

The property’s accessible array of curious geological exposures and polygonal columnar formations formed around 60 million years ago make it a ‘classic locality’ for the study of basaltic volcanism. The features of the Giant’s Causeway and Causeway Coast site and in particular the strata exposed in the cliff faces, have been key to shaping the understanding of the sequences of activity in the Earth’s geological history."

I could have stayed all day, but eventually the tour moved on and we explored  a couple other interesting spots before heading back to Belfast! 

The next day we bid adieu to Nate, who was heading back to Dublin for his flight home and we explored Belfast.  We logged A LOT of steps that day and enjoyed seeing everything we could possibly squeeze in.  

We particularly enjoyed the Titanic Museum {shown below} and were fascinated to learn about the construction of the Titanic, which took place on the museum's site right there on the port in Belfast.   

We thought this street was super cute and we loved the quote arched across the way, "There's only seven types of rain in Belfast:  Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday..."   Thankfully it only rained a little while we were there! 

Northern Ireland ended up being one of our favorite spots on the trip, so I will finish up with a few random facts about Northern Ireland that we learned while we were there:

1. Northern Ireland is a part of the United Kingdom, while Ireland is not.   They use the same currency and same postage as most of the UK (including England, Scotland, and Wales...but not including Ireland).  

2. Though Northern Ireland has its own culture, it does not have its own flag. 

3.  As mentioned above, the Titanic was constructed and launched from Belfast, though it did not pick up any passengers until reaching England/France. 

4. There is still a lot of conflict between Protestants and Roman Catholics.  

5. Game of Thrones was filmed on location in Northern Ireland for almost a decade.  The Northern Irish are very proud of this connection and it ended up being a great boost to their economy.  We've never seen the show before, but didn't have a hard time imagining why it was chosen as the backdrop for a show. 

We stopped by several Game of Thrones filming sites--including Dark Hedges (shown below)--on our Giant's Causeway tour.  

And that's it for Northern Ireland!   Thanks for following along with our adventures...stay tuned for 2 more segments to come!  

A Scottish Adventure

In 1987, when I was just 14-years-old, our family took a trip to Europe.  It was the oldest five of us kids, two friends, and my parents.  We didn't have a lot of money, but my Dad traveled a lot for work and saved his frequent flier miles for a long time  to make that trip happen.  It was frankly a somewhat miserable trip with long days crowded into a utilitarian van traipsing and tent-camping all over Europe, which was having one of the rainiest summers in European history.   But, it was during that trip that our eyes were open to a wider world than we ever had known before and I think I can say, without any hyperbole whatsoever, that  that trip literally changed all of our lives.   And my Dad knew that it would.   

I married someone who came from a family who pretty much never traveled, except for the occasional roadtrip to the family cabin in Idaho or for a beach trip out East (where both of his parents had grown up and still had a lot of family living out that way), but plane rides were not a thing.  Frankly, they weren't much of a thing in my upbringing either;  except for that one international trip, we always road-tripped wherever we were going.  And when our kids were young, we were the same,  zig-zagging all over the country in the car to visit family and explore new destinations on our annual summer vacation.  We always talked about taking an international trip with our kids, but always had a good excuse as to why it couldn't happen... we were too busy, travel was too expensive, the kids were too young, and on and on.   

Then Spencer got sick.   That sounds unrelated to all this, but it wasn't.   Spencer's leukemia was absolutely earth shattering to us and we came out of that time of our lives as fundamentally different people.   There's nothing like being told that your 16-year-old kid has a less than 50% chance of survival to help you realize that waiting for some elusive future perfect day to do something is a risky proposition.   If we wanted our kids to have certain experiences, we needed to stop putting them off and make them happen.    I consider his illness as the impetus for 1. homeschooling the kids, 2. finally remodeling our 1960's kitchen, 3. starting to travel internationally with our family.   Yes, we still had the same budget and time restraints that we'd had before, but we realized that we didn't want to look back with regrets and it was worth the sacrifice and belt-tightening it took to make these things happen.    

Since then, we've made travel a regular part of our lives.   Once again, this prioritization of travel does not come without sacrifice.  We still have to budget and cut back on other expenses to make this happen, but we have decided that the memories and exposure to other cultures that we gain in the process is worth that expense.  

So, all this introductory information is to bring me to this post about the trip we just returned from.   Glen served his mission in England and we'd always wanted to explore the rest of the British Isles (namely Scotland, Ireland, and Northern Ireland), but had never done it before.  We'd been watching for good ticket prices to pop up for this route for forever and finally several weeks ago, a good deal popped up for the end of February and we jumped on it!   We were a little hesitant about traveling in the wintertime, but it was honestly great to be out of the crowds of the high season and I felt like we got better prices on tours and hotels this time of year as well. 

We flew into Edinburgh, Scotland (my 39th country)...

And then  walked straight out of the airport and hopped on a bus to Glasgow, where we stayed the night.   After checking into our hotel and  dropping off our luggage, we decided to explore Glasgow for a few hours.  Here are some random scenes from around Glasgow.   

We basically walked from our centrally located hotel (Motel One) up to the Glasgow Cathedral and Necropolis by walking along this Street Art Mural Trail that we found online.   We only had a few hours of daylight, so we didn’t hit them all, but saw enough that we got a good flavor of the art and style!

The area around the Glasgow Cathedral had more of the cute European vibe to it than the sections of the city we had walked through, so I was enchanted.   The cathedral was not open for visitors at the time, so we just walked around for a bit.  

But what I was most enchanted by in Glasgow was the cemetery behind the Glasgow Cathedral—called the Necropolis.   It was lovely to see from afar and even lovelier to see while walking around!  WE enjoyed the views from atop the hill and loved looking at the old headstones.   

After exploring, we headed to dinner where I was excited to hear the restaurant offered free tap water to drink.  While commonplace in the USA, in Europe, we usually pay outrageously for bottled water in restaurants, unless we happened to have refilled our water bottles recently.  

We only laughed a little when the water came out to us in tequila bottles!   haha!  We were so thirsty by this point, that we didn’t care about appearances and guzzled three of them!    Other than the free water, the Mexican restaurant we picked was a bust.  Their food was too spicy and not that great, even beyond the spiciness level.   

We woke up early the next morning and took the West Highland train from Glasgow to Fort William.  That particular train route into the Scottish Highlands is supposed to be one of the most scenic train routes in the world and we were a little sad that it was  rainy on the first part of our journey.  We still got a good enough glimpse to realize that it was stunningly gorgeous, but it was hard to capture it in photos.  

We stored our luggage and walked around Fort William...

And we laughed that the towns in the Scottish Highlands lie on a geologic fault called the Great Glen Fault, which meant that there were references to the Great Glen all over the place!  Glen, of course, loved that and  posed for a few goofy photos!  

After a few hours of walking around Fort William, we caught an evening bus to Inverness, where we spent the night.  The next morning we joined a tour and visited  Eilean Donan Castle...

Looked for Nessie along the shores of Loch Ness...

Saw lots of Highland cows and gorgeous scenery...

And went out to the Isle of Skye.   

The Scottish Highlands surpassed our expectations and I highly recommend visiting if you get the chance. 

After our tour, we stayed one more night in Inverness and then took the bus back to Edinburgh where we stayed for a couple days.   Here are some sights from around Edinburgh... Greyfriar's Abbey and Victoria Street were two iconic Scottish places to visit and we loved the bagpipers that set up all over town.  JK Rowling wrote her Harry Potter books while living in Edinburgh and many people think that Diagon Alley is based on Victoria Street (the brightly colored shops below)...

We visited the Scotland National Gallery of Art.  Here are a few of the pics we admired or that made us laugh a bit!  

We visited the Botanic Gardens and just enjoyed the old and stunning architecture around town...The statue of the dog is Greyfriar's Bobby (found at the Greyfriar's Abbey) and has a sweet story to go with it. 

All in all, we loved Scotland.   Glasgow was okay, but we really enjoyed the Highlands and Edinburgh.  

It was a fabulous first leg to our journey.   Stay tuned for more....

Seventy Four

There's a certain member of our family that happens to love the number 74.  

I'm not really sure how it all got started, since, to my knowledge, the number has no significant meaning to anyone.  It's not anyone's birth year; it's not in anyone's phone number; it's not a channel they watch; and it's not a favorite scripture verse.  It's just 74 and that's enough.

Part of the appeal of this number  is the way it sounds when spoken aloud.   It's four syllables that just flow.  And "Seventy-four" cannot be spoken in a normal tone of voice, but must be spoken with a hint of  an accent (don't ask me which one though) and with a nasally tone. Actually that's not entirely true. Most of us just say seventy-four plainly, but just enjoy hearing Person X pronounce it with drama and flair.  As such, it is now a family mission to find  74 "in the wild" just so we can point it out and hear our family member say it in their dramatic fashion!   Over the last few years it's become a quest and a joke in our family...like when a member of our family sings Hymn #74 at church and has to share it.

So....the other Saturday, Glen and I went for a walk along the Murdoch Trail.   It was cold, but lovely until the very end when it started snowing/raining on us.

When we got towards the end of our walk we realized that we were approaching the 7 mile mark, so we decided to go a little longer to get to 7.4....you know just so we could join the family fun!   It's not quite 74, but we didn't feel like walking for 3 days, so close enough! 

Then we took a selfie to send out on the family group chat...

Except that we are old people who forgot that taking selfies with a flipped camera means the image is flipped too, so this is what our original photo looked like before we flipped it manually.   Oops...47 is not what we meant.  Haha! 

So, in an effort to be cool with the kids, we exposed ourselves as the nerds we are.  

Seventy four. 

Have a great week!


PS  Just found this photo in Ellie's missionary google photo drive...

Hockey: The Next Generation

Glen and I came from fairly different family backgrounds, but one thing that was similar in both of our families was our Dads' extreme love of sports.   I grew up with the tv on a good portion of the day, mostly  tuned either to the news or to sports.  You knew how my Dad's teams were doing from across the house, based on the type of utterances being yelled out.   My brothers are also big sports' fans who can quote stats, tell you how all their teams are doing, and tell you all about the collectible baseball/basketball cards that they have or once had and how much they might be worth, etc.   Us sisters in the family can hold our own in conversations about sports, generally knowing the rules and how they work, but none of us are quite as avidly interested as my brothers.  

Glen, however, is one of five boys, with just one sister, so the sports' obsession in their house was next-level.  One of his brothers is a PE teacher and HS football & lacrosse coach, another played college lacrosse and coached lacrosse for his boys, Glen played college lacrosse, another brother is a sportswriter for a local newspaper, and his sister was a collegiate gymnast and is now married to a PE teacher and coach.   All are avid sports' fans.  And if you want to talk to his Dad, be prepared for the conversation to turn to sports within a couple minutes, no matter the starting topic.   It was definitely  an important part of both of our upbringings.  
 
The next generation (our kids at least) have a somewhat low interest in sports compared to the families we both grew up in.  They all played sports as kids/teens, but none of them really took them super seriously.   Cami did play a year of lacrosse at BYU and Adam likely would have tried for the BYU rugby team if his junior and senior high school seasons hadn't been decimated by COVID cancellations, but mostly our kids'  involvement in sports was just a fun way to interact with friends, be part of a team, and push themselves physically.  Neither Glen or I are the type to push and they didn't push it on their own, so it was what it was.   Our boys do have their sports' teams they follow and cheer for, and all of us (including the girls) can appreciate a good BYU game here and there, but it's not a huge part of any of our  lives.  

The one professional sport that is the exception, however, is hockey and Glen was as excited as can be when Utah announced that a professional hockey team was coming to Salt Lake City!      Glen had 1/2 season tickets to the Caps back when we lived in Northern Virginia, so was enthusiastic when his brother, Alex, offered to go in halfsies with him on 1/2 season tickets for the inaugural season of the Utah Hockey Club! For only having tickets for 1/4 of the home games, it's shocking how frequently the games pop up and it's become quite a fun way to have some one-on-one time with each of the kids. 

He took Ellie before she left on her mission:

He took Emma one time...

 

He's taken Adam and Spence separately a few times,

and bought an extra ticket for the game against the Caps, so they could all cheer on their Caps together! 

He's bonded with a family in the ward over their shared love of hockey.  Connor (one of the boys we taught in Sunday School a couple years ago) even brought him a Utah Hockey Club sweatshirt his Mom had made for him! 

 
This picture was taken in Colorado, but I thought it was awesome that Glen took his brother to an Avalanche vs. Caps game for his birthday! 

I smile that they always end up stopping for somewhere fun for dinner on the way to the game and always end up coming home with some new Utah Hockey Club gear....which will be dated as soon as they decide on a real name for the team!  😂

 

 

Next game it's my turn!   

Have a lovely week and may all your teams win big! 

The B Date with My Boy

In this blogpost, I mentioned how Glen and I were starting an alphabet dating challenge.  Starting with the letter 'A' we are making our way through the alphabet, one letter - one month at a time, alternating who plans it.  Why?  Because we've been married 31 years and we were looking to mix things up and add a little direction and fun to our dating life.   

Glen planned January, so it was my turn to plan 'B' for February.   I knew pretty quickly what the anchor of our 'B' date would be (I'll get to that in a minute), so the rest of the activities were planned around that anchor's location and timing. 

We started our date at the BYU Bean Museum, where Emma met us for a few minutes to let me borrow something for our upcoming trip.  

We walked around and took special note and pictures of some of the B exhibits in the Bean Museum!   I was happy to have found a Beaver there and Glen took special delight in the Baboons, because he'd joked on the way to our date (of which I'd told him nothing about) that maybe we were going to see the Baboons!  

Emma was only there with us for about 10-15 minutes, but we had to take her to the exhibit that scarred her as a small child.    I'm not sure she liked it much more as a college student as she had as an elementary aged child.  

After the Museum, we headed to the Bombay House for some delicious Indian food! 

Then we headed to try out the dedicated gluten free doughnut shop...Bismarck!  They made everything hot and fresh and we quite enjoyed it!

After indulging in the doughnuts, we headed to the anchor part of our date....to see  Bella perform in the BYU Ballet!  

 

Bella (a friend of ours from Virginia) is a Brilliant Ballerina and we always enjoy watching her perform.  She is amazingly graceful and makes it all look so effortless.  

All in all, it was a Beautiful night and a fun way to try out all the B things! 

Have a Bodaciously Breathtaking Week! 

Scenes from this Winter

Most of you probably know that I grew up in Minnesota, which you would think would make me a bit more tolerant to the cold than I am.  Instead I would say that my growing up years in Minnesota might have made me a little more jaded against the cold than I otherwise would be and I strongly prefer to be hot over cold (except when I'm sleeping, but that's a story for another day. haha)  It's not that I hate winter, because I don't.   It's just that I happen to like winters with a little more variety to them than just cold and snowy...like Utah's tend to be.  I am grateful that it does not get near as cold here in Utah, as it does in Minnesota, but it's not the ups and the downs in the temps like in Virginia, that gives you  plenty of mild days mixed in with the cold.   

Enough complaining from me!  I'm trying hard  to focus on the positive, so here is a glimpse of some of the lovely scenes from our winter this year:  

This photo was taken on the way home from the dentist a couple weeks ago.  It had nary snowed a drop when I walked in for my cleaning and looked like this when I walked out.   It was long, white-knuckled trip back home and I was grateful that there was little traffic. 

 

I found this cute scene from BYU campus in our camera roll after a recent snowstorm, which means it was taken by Emma or Adam. The beard made me laugh!  😂

Here's an icy sight that caught my eye recently when I was taking my Mom to visit with her sister...

Glen and I came across this sunrise on one of our morning walks recently!  😍

And here's another one from another morning hike...  I love Utah sunrises!

Even the Alabamans got a good snowfall this year and enjoyed getting out and  playing in it!

Adam recently got out into the canyon with his friends and had a snowy adventure of his own...

As I sit here typing up this blogpost (on Feb 13th) with this view out my window...

I am drawn to this postcard I recently received in the mail that reminds me that winter is a great time to slow down and prioritize self-care...

Which I'm pretty sure means staying in my sweats as often as possible, right?!  

Have a lovely week!  Stay warm, my friends!  💗