SATC Birthdays

It was my friend SJ's birthday this Friday, and as part of her celebration she wanted to go see the new SATC movie with a bunch of our gal pals which was fine with me since I've had it penned in my planner for months. So excited!

Unfortunately (or fortunately!), SJ bought all of our tickets to the WRONG CINEMA! We were suppose to go to the local theatre in town, but she bought tickets out in Liffy Valley which takes about 30 minutes to get to. Realising her mistake at the beginning of the week, the birthday girl organised a party bus to pick us up at the house where we were getting ready (Obviously you HAVE to dress up for the movie!). The bus was amazingly fun. There were about 12 girls in the bus, and the driver cranked up the music as we drove through Dublin with disco lights flashing in the bus.

Our Party Bus


The movie, as to be expected, was terribly fantastic. The clothes for the most part were lovely. Since the filming was done in Marrakesh, it was fun to see because I've been there before (but clearly not at the five star level like in the movie!).

Getting ready for the movie



We then headed to the Odeon where we met up with our other group of friends. (They were out for our friend C's birthday). There were about 25 girls all together and it was the kind of night were every song was my FAVORITE SONG :)

Titles, Deeds and Insurance, Oh MY!

BF and I went to meet our solicitor to sign all the paperwork for the house today (FINALLY!). We were stalled a bit there with the holiday and the engagement but it looks like we'll be getting the keys to our house before mid-June. How grown up! It's been a long process though apparently ours was short compared to some of my other friends who have bought homes recently. Everything moves at a snail's pace here in Ireland- I've even forgotten what the inside of the house looks like! :)

Cupcake

After attending the wedding fair this weekend and looking through bridal magazines, I've decided I want to look like a cupcake - A big puffy dress that makes it very apparent that I'm the bride. We actually haven't done one lick of wedding planning as we can't even decide what continent to have it on, but I think the dress is the most fun part anyways.

Soo... this is what I'm thinking... What do you think?


I kid, I kid. I want nothing this dramatic, but it's fun to look at all these er... "interesting" wedding dresses!

Soccer

Only 18 more days... I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE sport montages and Nike commercials and this is my favorite one so far. Watch it and get yourself ready for the World CUP!

I bless the rains down in Africa....

This past weekend was definitely the best weather we've had since I've moved to Ireland and I took full advantage of the rare sunshine. Saturday, there was a wedding fair on in the D4 hotel. I went with my friend Sonya who is OBSESSED with weddings so she was a good buddy to take along. The fair was a bit lame to be honest, but they did have a fun fashion show and had tons of wedding magazines which I promptly took to Herbert park for a sunny read.

Saturday night, the girlies and I went to the Spring Break concert. It was AMAZING as always- nothing better then screaming Africa at the top of your lungs. I went 80's prom style complete with teal sequins! Surprisingly, I was walking to my friends house when I was stopped by this older lady telling me it was the most beautiful dress she's seen all day. AND, other gals throughout the night loved the dressed too. I couldn't tell if they were taking the pi#$ or if they really liked it. It is honestly the ugliest dress I've worn in a long time :)

The Gals


Me and my personal trainer


The lead singer- Shout out to Boston! (Note his creepy gloves)


The next day BF and I walked into town in the lovely sun, watched a cricket match and had a picnic in Stephen's green. At the end of the day, we headed to my friend Kate's house for a BBQ. She has a roof deck which is the biggest I have ever seen, and we had a lovely BBQ with champagne. She forced BF and I to drink out of the funniest 2 becomes 1 champagne glasses to celebrate our engagement. Too CHEESY! :)

Cricket


The funny glasses

Excited Visitors

We have the most adorable visitors staying with us this week. My sister's, husband's cousin and his friend (did you follow that?) are visiting Ireland and doing a tour of Europe for the next couple of weeks. This is their first time abroad, and they are LOVING everything. It's so refreshing to see people really, really, really get excited about being in Ireland regardless of the weather!

Last night, we met them down in Temple bar for dinner outside and then had a couple of pints (and maybe a shot or two) before BF and I headed home (Us old folks just can't hang with the young ones anymore-especially on a Wednesday night!)

In Love

New pictures of Baby Carson! I swear this blog won't be all baby all the time, but he just had his first official photo shoot (at six days old), and I'm such a proud auntie! The photos are taken from the photographer's blog, you can see more pictures of the little peanut there. Below are some of my favorites.

My little peapod







The Beautiful family

Egypt

After spending time in Jordan, BF and I headed back to Israel so we could cross the border into Egypt. Visiting Egypt has been a lifelong dream of mine and the part I was looking forward to the most during our trip.

Right before we left, we heard rumours that there were kidnap warnings in the Sinai region of Egypt (believed to be Hamas and Hezbollah headquarters), but I wasn't too concerned since we were going to Cairo. I wasn't concerned that is until BF said that we would be driving through the Sinai for FIVE HOURS through the desert- Ekks! We had hired a private driver which was good and BF told me to be as quiet as possible as my American accent would give me away. Terrifying. We got in the car and off we drove. I was nervous but everything seemed to be going ok. The driver spoke a bit of English and about 30 minutes into our drive, he turned around and asked us if we had been to Egypt before. We were honest and said no (tourist mistake number one?). He drove on for a bit through a mountainous region and then all of a sudden pulled the car over and told us to "GET OUT!"... Oh god oh god oh god. I looked at BF and was like "Holy crap, we're going to die". Then the driver was like "Turn around" - oh man this is it.

Then... he said "Isn't it beeeeutiful, the mountains, you like?" WHEW! OH man- we were safe! :)

After that we drove through the desert, under the Suez Canal and through some village check points where the driver said in Arabic that we were from Ireland and Canada (ekks! Pretending to be Canadian to prevent us from getting hassled? I guess it's alright, but this time only!)

Anyways, we finally got to Cairo safe and sound and spent a day exploring the museum and then the second day visiting the pyramid and the sphinx. I LOVED the mummy room in the museum. It was super creepy and you could see their eyelashes! EKKS!

The pyramids were amazing as well- larger then expected definitely. We got to climb into the great pyramid (which was rather claustrophobic) and ended up in a tomb room. After our long day exploring the pyramids, we ended up on the Nile for dinner during sunset.

The Great Pyramids





Along the tunnels into the tomb


BF making out with the Sphinx (Should I be jealous?!)


Nice Sphinx


Dinner on the Nile

Relax

It's been such a crazy week - getting engaged, becoming an aunt, getting promoted, passing my driver test and getting a learner's permit! I spent all weekend relaxing on the couch with these:

My first Wedding Magazines!

Punctual

The baby's here! The baby's here! After 26 hours of labor (!!!!), Baby Carson arrived on his due date. My sister and her family are doing well. All I have is this fuzzy picture. Look at his sweet little face. (He must take after his favorite aunt.)

Eilat, Israel and Jordan

After spending a couple days in Tel Aviv, we decided to take the bus down to Eilat which is a resort town at the bottom of Israel. From our hotel window you could see four countries! (Israel, Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia). We lounged around the pool for some time and then take an overnight trip to Jordan which was AMAZING!

Crossing the border


In Jordan we spent the day exploring Petra which is famous for being in the last scene of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. It's an amazing forgotten city which is built into the mountains.

View of the Treasury which is in the movie


Making new friends in Jordan


View of the Monastery- We had to climb a very steep mountain to get up here!


King's Tomb


Petra is truly amazing. I hadn't done any research into the sight before I went so I didn't know what to expect, but it honestly was like an outdoor museum. After exploring for the day, BF and I headed to the desert to settle down in our Bedouin camp! We were lucky as there was a full moon out so it was completely lovely and romantic.

Bedouin Camp


After hearing random wild animals howling ALL NIGHT LONG -ekks, we woke up and got ready for our trip through Wadi Rum which is a valley region most famous for being a battle scene for Lawrence of Arabia.

Wadi Rum


Climbing up sand dunes


View from the top of a mountain- Can you find me?

Continued celebrations!

I'll continue with my trip post but it's been a crazy week as I'm going out every night this week with different groups of friends to celebrate the engagement. But I found out yesterday that I also got PROMOTED at work!!!!!!! YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!! I don't do anything by halves, eh?

Tuesday night, my girlfriend Kerri and her hubby happened to be in town for the evening so BF and I met them for a lovely Thai dinner at Mangetu. The restaurant is SO good, but we were the only ones in the whole place.



Then last night, we had a come dine with me session. I had missed the past two dinners so I was really excited to meet up with the gals - and they didn't disappoint. The sweet girls decorated the apartment, and we honestly didn't stop laughing all night. SO FUN!

Jeruselem

After a couple days of hanging out at the beach, BF and I got really bored. We just don't really know how to relax so off we went to Jerusalem. As mentioned, we're not really religious but thought it would be great to see the place which is the most holy site for all three major world religions.

We grabbed a local bus for the approximately one hour trip and the bus station is mad. It's FILLED with members of the Israeli army who are traveling from their day trips, but the soldiers are young. It's really strange to see a teenage girl joking with her friends and putting on lip gloss with an M-16 slung over her shoulder.

Anyways, we get to the old city which is not big at all -maybe about a square mile and start off with the Christian sites. We walked the Stations of the Cross, saw the Last Supper Room and the birth place of the Virgin Mary. The stations of the cross and the birthplace of the Virgin Mary are in the Muslim quarters so they take no mind of it. There are stalls selling stuff right next to the stations and the birthplace is now an apartment (with laundry hanging out to dry right inside the entrance.) MAD!

Calgary Hill- Station of the cross 10-14


Touching Jesus' tomb


We then checked out the Wailing Wall (Jewish Holy Land) and the Dome of the Rock (Muslin Holy Land) as well.

Dome of the Rock


Wailing Wall


Finally, we left the city and walked to Gethsemane Garden. There are trees there that are over 2000 years old. They were there during Jesus' time!

Celebrations

I came into work today to find the lovely ladies at work had decorated my desk for my return from holidays. Ballons, banners and streamers. How sweet!

Exodus to Israel

After all the excitement of the engagement, we grabbed our things and headed to Dublin port for our ferry to Wales. Aside from just getting engaged, I had never been on a ferry before so it was all excitement all night :)

We finally made it to Wales at midnight and it was FREEZING.... Not only that, but we had a four hour wait in the cold train station before our train into London. Perfect way to spend the first night of being engaged, eh?


When we got to London, we were relieved to find out our flight was not canceled. WHEW! The first couple minutes of the flight was really turbulent so that was scary but it was smooth sailing after that.

We spent the first couple of days in Tel Aviv, hanging out and relaxing on the beach. We did walk to the old town of Jaffa and wandered around its lovely old buildings. Tel Aviv is a lovely beach city but not too much to report here. It was just chilled out which was the perfect way to start our holidays!

Lunch along the coast between Tel Aviv and Jaffa


Jaffa


Old Town Jaffa

YES!

We're engaged!

BF proposed in our apartment right before we started out on our long ferry/train journey to London for our trip out to the MiddleEast. It was a lovely, cheesy and completely awkward proposal- just as I would expect :) We had an aMAZING trip. Details to follow throughout the week.

Celebrating with champagne at sunset- Tel Aviv