Sunpajic and other August Fun

I (Beth) am now leading the junior high youth group at church called Sunpajic, and it is a blast so far. About 10 kids turned up last Friday for our first event of the fall, an action-packed night of dodgeball, scripture relays, craft-making, and pictionary. They are a fun group full of energy and enthusiasm. I think it will be a good year!

And here are some miscellaneous pictures from August that had yet to post:

Ireland!

Visiting Ireland has been a lifelong dream for Kelly, and though we had our share of rough spots on this vacation (like the rental car that was literally falling apart as we drove), the beauty of the land exceeded our expectations.

We hit the ground running on the first day in Dublin. After taking a

whole tour of the city in one of Zach's favorite modes of transportation, a double-decker bus, we toured Trinity College and then visited

Dublinia, an interactive museum of Ireland's history all the way back to the vikings. Afterwards we enjoyed browsing through the amazing collection of religious texts (like the earliest known copies of the gospels and Paul's letters) at the Beatty Library while Zach snoozed.

Zach definitely did not sleep through Riverdance however! He loved every minute of the dancing and clapped emphatically after each song.

After a bumpy start with the rental car (part of it was held together with zip ties), we started on our drive to Kilkenny, stopping at several

sights along the way including a tour of Knowth, a huge tomb from about 3200BC, complete with its own "Woodhenge" that predates the more famous Stonehenge (by a lot). We made a quick visit to Trim Castle, cool in and of itself for being a castle made even cooler as the filming location for Braveheart, the greatest movie of all time, then explored a bit of Kilkenny.

We visited Kilkenny Castle

the next morning, which was impressive but somewhat overshadowed in exciting-ness by the playground out back to some in our family. We had an awesome time monkeying around and playing off some energy before hopping back into our rapidly-deteriorating vehicle (part of it was scraping the ground) for another drive through the country.

Our next stop was a tour of the Rock of Cashel, the ruins of a cathedral and tower dramatically perched on top of a huge mound overlooking the beautiful countryside.

Driving a bit further, we passed through

Killarney National Park, stopping to take pictures all along the way. Our favorite spot was Torc Waterfall, where we had fun running and climbing, and I had fun taking pictures. Though I could have camped out, we figured it would be best to head on to our B&B in Kildare, but we got

to drive back along the windy road through park again on our way out of town the next day.

After a good night's sleep, we set out to explore the Dingle Peninsula. We followed the path of a 45 kilometer driving tour, stopping at historic sights like an oratory, beehive hut, ancient fort, church ruins, etc... the place is filthy with this stuff! The drive is almost completely along

the coastline of the peninsula, so breathtaking gorgeous-ness surrounded us the whole time. Such a beautiful place!

Then it was on to Limerick, our overnight pit stop on the way to Dublin for our flight home. We had Zach all pumped up because our hotel was

supposed to have a pool. Well, we get there and it is really their sister hotel about a 10 minute drive away that's got the pool, and they don't let kids swim in it after 5 p.m. (and it was well after 5 p.m. of course). So we asked to be switched anyway, thinking that we could sneak the little guy in and no one would be the wiser. So we switch, drive over, and run down to the pool only to find that they've got a full-time pool/spa receptionist, so there will be no sneaking him in. We were really proud of Zach though because he took it in stride and after a Happy Meal and a "swim" in the bath tub, he was a pretty happy camper.

We enjoyed our drive back to Dublin the next day, having grown a bit (but only a bit) fond of our death-trap of a rental car. Ireland was a fantastic mix of country and city, old and new, and one of the prettiest places in the world.