David and MacKenzie 2006

The month is almost gone and I just realized that I forgot an anniversary! Our oldest son and wife have been married 9 years. Hard to believe. Rooted around and found the photos. Good memories.

Friends Karen and Sarah, David's "other mom" and "sister" who played violin beautifully for the wedding.

Memorial Day

Had lunch out and then went to my family's graves. 

Later we went to Husband's family's cemetery. It was a nice day.

The Children's Blizzard (see book by same name) headstone we always visit. Husband's great grandfather found these two boys dead in a haystack after the blizzard.

Lots of children's graves in this old cemetery.

One of our extended family plots had six of these headstones for children in a row. Four of them were infants. The infant mortality rate was sobering.

We also visited the grave of our family friend  who passed away last year.

Hunting Worms

We came home from a pre-Memorial Day supper, and Husband and the big girls did not come in.

When I checked, they were out in the wet yard and he was showing them how to "pick" earthworms. He taught me how when we were dating. Life skills.

Dublin

Our hotel had beautiful details.

 The Irish thistle woven into the hall rugs.

 The restaurant was called Wilde after Oscar Wilde.

 Traditional Irish breakfast, including blood pudding.

Larry and Ann Farm-Ireland

 Larry had a retired hunter that he used to ride. Beautiful.

We drove to several fields. The land is very rocky compared to ours, but also very fertile and grows wonderful crops.

One of Larry's fields, in front. The split up, smaller fields in back are more typical of Irish field size.

 We drove through the town Larry grew up in, which had a castle ruin.

Irish Farming

Our driver, Sean, did some fancy parking with a couple of farmers giving hand signals to assist. They got it done.

After lunch, we drove over to meet our farmer. Larry and Ann welcomed us to their lovely home and farm.

So interesting how much things are the same. This farmer was the most progressive farmer we met with. He had slowly bought land over the years and removed the traditional hedges between them.