Fun times with the NET Staff..

So one night Sheila and I were in the Kitchen and she saw a huge spider....which I captured under a plastic thing. Then Kevin came to take it away to spare its life......

One day I was jealous of Baby ConCon and how everyone always picks him up and tosses him about.....
but Mark said he could lift me like Baby ConCon no problem...

Take two...

Hope you enjoyed the above display of sleep deprevation at its finest!
I would also like to note that currently behind me Sheila and Caitlyn are doing the Jillian Michaels 30 day shred...which i was not allowed to video put here is some of what you'd be hearing.....

No..no Jillian, your so evil
I hate you Jillian...
5....ahhh.4....3..2...1
I can't.....its really hard
I'm to uncoordinated to do this
hahahahahhahah....*gasp for air
*more gasping for air...
I hate her with ever inch of my being
Hey are you gonna put this in your blog??? Ahhh I hope you do....yeahh email it to Jillian Michaels
Caitlyn is this circut number 3????? yeah Sheila ...I can't even do this one, its too hard.
hey are you typing this? read it back to me right now

Shout out to my hero Hero Jillian Michaels.... Sarah Guzik shout out to you too.... number one fan!

A Guinness Tour and More

Above you will find....a little video of Kevin and Morgan and I as we journeyed to the guinness factory in Dublin.
I should mention that we did have many other fun adventures that day....which is why we got to the guinness factory when it was practically closing and had to rush to finish towards the end :). Earlier that morning we had gone to Mass. After Mass the priest came up to us and asked who we were and if we wanted to come over for tea. We agreed. The priest, Fr. Anthony was a missionary priest from China and he actually nver says morning mass there but the other priest didn't show up. It was certainly in God's providence that we got to meet him.
We had chinese tea with him and he told us all about China and the Chinese community in Dublin. He also showed us his massive vegetable garden (which got lettuce for our sandwiches the next day from). In the end we ended up visiting with him for two hours and he fed us delicious Chinese lunch. I ate so much lunch and drank so much tea i thought i was going to burst! SOOOO GOOD! It was only the day before when we were talking about how we could save money on food during our trip and then Fr. Anthony feeds us enough for all day!
After visiting with Fr. Anthony we took the bus downtown and explored Dublin. We went to a giant music store and then we went to Petersons, which is a famous pipe store where we learned all about pipes so we could purchase the perfect pipe to suit us hahahaha! Very educational. All in all it was a grand tour of Dublin. Then after the Guinness Factory we had a huge dinner with our host Mr Tim Jackson, followed by an evening of sitting a red wine. Yum!

Currently things are rapping up at NET Training here in Navan and on Friday we'll head back up to Donegal to conclude training. The Netters are all lovely and there are always good times to be had with them....and the Staff too :)! We are just doing ministry training now...which is by far the most arduous of training topics. They are doing well and not falling asleep. So Good for them. Busy times abound. Yesterday I bought a brand new pair of jeans at a Mall because mine are going to have holes soon. It was a big step for me...you know buying new full price clothing,,,but i think i'm going to be okay with it? DEEP BREATHS! DEEP BREATHS!!! I know Francis would not approve.....hahaha!

Days off continued...

(Note: If you didn't read the previous post you probably should before continue)
Okay so we here we are at St Brigid's cathedral...on the grounds where her monestary had been!

 So we went inside the church and they had a whole display about Brigid and the history of the catherdral and lots of old carvings and things.  apparently the early monestary was distroyed like 10 time during the norse invasions of the 9th century. So there isn't really much to be found of what it looked like before they build this buge cathedral in the 13c. and obviously it looked a lot more different then...and pretty much less like a protestant church then it does currently.

Kevin also climbed up the round tower. They have steps all the way up the inside which I guess are really more like ladders according to him. It's like 5 stories up and each ladder gets more steep. He took lots of pictures and such while Morgan and I waited at the bottom. IT cost 4 euro to go up...so we nominated Kevin.

All in all it was just super amazing to be able to visit the site. Sooooo Happy..!

Then we were off in the car again to drive through the mountains on the way to Glendalough. Well basically you drive through a huge valley ..with the mountains on both sides. On the way we tryed to go on this site road which eventually turned into a foot path.....and we saw many sheep wandering on the road. Eventually when we couldn't drive anymore on the road because there was a steam in front of us we had to turn back and drive all the way back to the main raod. it was totally worth it though! great fun in our little clown car!

So when we got the ruins of St Kevin's monestary we basically just walked around and Kevin explained to us the history of the place. We also spent a lot of time in the grave yard...where people still get buried discussing what kind of tomb stones we would like based on the ones we saw.  Great fun! The grounds are like a huge park with a little river and a boardwalk so we went for a nice walk around sunset. Beautiful place. I understand why Kevin likes it so much there.

This concluded our day and after we ate dilicious pizza at a nice little pub we made our way to Dublin. This was a great driving advenutre as it was my first time driving on windy country road in Ireland at night. it was quite the thrill! Morgan fell asleep early on in the back as if she was drunk passed out so she missed most of our exciting drive through the city....too bad for her! We got lost in dublin because we didn't know really where we were...only where we were going. Eventually we found our way to Tim's. Then we had some tea and went off to sleep!

Well sorry for the broken up posts...but my time is up so you'll have to wait for the day 2 story! Which will include....unexpected lunch with a chinese missionary priest. Wandering around Dublin...and a lively trip to the guiness factory and hopefully some pictures too! Maybe a video?

Two Days Off

This past weekend myself, Kevin and Morgan had two days off. We decided that we would go to Dublin for this time. NET training is still going on in Navan which is only about an hour from Dublin. So in the morning we started out to Dublin with a thinly outlines agenda:
Stay at Tim's house in Dublin, Go to a giant music store in Dublin, Visit the Guinness factory and go to Glendalough (the place where St. Kevin founded his monestary).
So off we drove into the Irish country side. First we decided that we should definitley stop at the Hill of Tara because it's right outside of Navan and Kevin had never been (we took all the girls there the week before). The Hill of Tara is where the Irish Kings where crowned and it a super ancient site. It is also the place where St Patrick lit the fire that only the High Kings were allowed to lit and also were they converted to Christianity....as far as I know. They have a magical tree there too...hahaha.
Anyhow so after we wandered around the Hill of Tara and saw lots of sheep we got back into the car to continue our adventure. On our way finding the way back to the main road I said to Morgan and Kevin in a sort of joking manner that I thought that this weekend we should go the Kildare because that is where St Brigid is from and she is my hero. Kevin then responds that we should just go there right now as its on the way to Glendalough....So here I am in a car in Ireland unexpectely driving to the home town of my favorite saint in life!!!! A little bit overwhelming if I do say so myself as I didn't expect that we could just go.
Later that afternoon we arrived in Kildare and really didn't have any idea of where to go or what to see as we just randomly decided to drive there. It's really quite lovely that Ireland is so small :). We drove through the center of the town and saw a tourist centre but then we saw a catholic church steeple on the far side of town so we decided to make that our first stop! The church actually was a Carmelite church and had nothing to do with St Brigid (besides having a really nice statue of her and  a window).  We stayed and prayed there for a while as the church was super awesome and then we asked the lady in the bookshop if there was anything about St Brigid we could visit. She said the only thing was St Brigid's Cathedral, but that it was a Protestant church. We thought that was sort of strange but we decided to go take a look anyhow.
Side Note: St Brigid was from the 5th century so i knew we couldn't actually see things she owned or stuff like that we were just looking for where her monestary had been historically or her church or sisters etc.

So off we go to the big Cathedral in the town...which was right in the middle on a hill and clearly the whole town had been built around it. On the sign it said that the church was built in the 13c. meaning that it was originally a catholic church. It would have just been taken over by the English and made into a Church of ireland Church a couple hundred year after that. The property also had a 9c round tower on it for the monks to climb into during Norse raids...so it was like the for real place where St Brigid's Monestary would have been founded! What What!
Well it dinner right now so i gotta go but....i'll just leave you hanging and tell you more about my adventure sooon!!    To be Continued!!!!