& that's the way life goes

…and I’m back from Ireland. It was really a great experience and made me appreciate where I live. Not because of anything bad happened but leaving your country just makes you appreciate what you left behind. Our next travel adventure will probably be a little more planned with less travel, we were on a train or bus almost every day. 9 days of that can take it’s toll.

The things I’ll miss most about Ireland are the people (seriously, nicest people on earth), the pubs, the beer (All of it: Guinness, Murphy’s, Kilkenny’s, Harp, Carlsberg, Beamish, Smithwicks), the history and the green landscape dotted with sheep and cows.

The "character bar" in Dingle

I’m not the girl that is all “I love beer” I’m more like “meh, it’s ok, I’ll drink it” but seriously REAL beer like the ones I listed above do not give you the bloated, gassy feeling you would get drinking draft Miller Lite and it has taste. I’m just sayin’. I’m in total love with Irish beer and I will be drinking REAL beer as often as possible. But I’m broke must of the time so I guess I’ll have to suck it up and drink crap American beer (Ghettoblaster, not included in the crap American beer comment)

Update: As Dream In Gray pointed out in the comments -  Miller is a lager, which accounts for the bloating/gasiness.  I guess I’ll just need to stick to stouts, which I feel (and could totally be wrong about) aren’t as popular in bars as Miller and Bud Light.

St Colman's - Cobh

Isn't this gorgeous? I took it myself, I'm impressed lol

Oh! And also the cheese curry fries! (Thanks for the tip Erin!)

I look exhausted because I was - Dinner that night was Curry Cheese Fries from Lennox mmmmmmm

I’m not even sure our dogs missed us. They had so much fun with their Auntie L, she even took them on walks almost every day!

It felt awesome to sleep in my own bed with both the dogs cuddled with us. Scooby usually sleeps on the floor but he’s such a cuddle bug that sometimes we feel sorry he has no one to lay with now. Our house seems a little bit empty without Nani. It’s not because she was energetic or needed a lot of attention, there is just a space. We lived a long time as a three dog house. Before I left for Ireland I told C that I wasn’t sure if I ever wanted to get another dog but being home now something feels like it’s missing. Of course I could never replace Nani, but in time I think we have enough room to give another dog a forever home. Possibly a puppy, even though I swore I wouldn’t ever do it again. Funny how you change your mind.

In other news, can you believe that we bought our cottage almost a year ago? It blows my mind how time flies by. We were going to open it this weekend but Michigan decided that winter isn’t over yet so we are still up in the air if we want to go up there and freeze, it has hardly any insulation and the windows are old and drafty.

I’ve been fully aware lately how truly blessed I am and I hope I never lose that feeling.  It’s so easy to take things for granted.

So tell me, what new and exciting things have been going in your lives this past week?

Speaking of travel…here are a couple other questions I’m researching.

{via weheartit}

• What are the top 5 things you must have on a long flight?
• How do you calm the travel nerves?
• What song should I make sure to have on my mp3 player?

*original image*

{via weheartit}

Thank you so much for all your kind words while C and I go through this difficult time. I can’t tell you how much it means to me. Scooby, my sensitive boy, hasn’t been eating much lately and he looks for Nani when it’s time to eat. It’s like he can’t eat until she does, which is why his eating habits had altered her last few days with us. We are taking both dogs on daily walks and will return to our normal routines next week. We are hopeful that by the time we leave for Ireland they have settled into a life without Nani.

If you have any advice on how to help pets cope with a loss of a companion I’d love to hear it.

I also would like some advice on traveling abroad. C and I have never left North America so we are kind of clueless on what we should bring with us beside out passports. We have no idea what to expect from customs or how we should carry spending money.

Thank you!
♥ xoxox ♥

*image location*

original can be found by maddy mash on flickr - click image

After this weekend I am hopeful that C and I will be able to get excited for Ireland, which is good because we leave in a little over 3 weeks!  Nani almost completely stopped eating on Monday.  The only thing she would eat was lunch meat and cheese that I would break into teeny tiny pieces and peanut butter out of her kong.  I finally googled inner ear infection and I was starting to believe that when we took her to the vet last night they were going to refer her for a CT scan and schedule surgery to have her ear drained.

Last night marked the third trip to the vet in a month but this time we saw a different doctor who immediately decided to look in Nani’s mouth after listening to the symptoms.  Finally, a real diagnosis where she showed us the problem!! Nani has to have two molars extracted.  One has completely lost all it’s enamel that caused an infection in the inside of her cheek, causing swelling.  Not her ears!  She also has a cracked molar on the other side.  The doctor assured us that this is something that happens in older dogs.  We are so relieved to finally know the cause of Nani’s pain!  C watered down some canned dog food into a soupy consistency and she devoured it.  Poor baby was starving!  She is now on pain meds until tomorrow.  Please send lots of hugs to Nani who will go in morning to get her teeth removed.

I’m confident she will have the luck of the Irish with her.  I am 1/8 Irish ya know, a Burton no less

Happy last day of February! Usually it’s January that I’m happy to see go but this February has been brutal with the amount of snow and crappy driving conditions. Good riddance. That also means that summer is creeping a little bit closer every day. Woofuckinghoo! I miss my flip flops!

I won’t bore you too much more with my Tampa trip. We went to the game and we were amazed by the sea of red. I felt a little sorry for Tampa because when the Wings scored 6 times the place was crazy. It was even so bad (for Tampa Bay) that there were not 1 but 3 octopi (a Detroit hockey tradition for playoffs) thrown out onto the ice. I mean these Wings fans stuffed an octopus in their pants! (I don’t know if it actually came from their pants…) One of the Tampa Bay crew members got fined for swinging one around. I don’t know if he knew that the gesture is disrespectful to the home team or not. You can only swing Octopi in Detroit, sorry Stevie Y. I read an article that even the upper management was embarrassed by all the red in the seats. The Lightning organization vowed not to raise ticket prices for playoffs this year or next season so Lightning fans will buy tickets to avoid the massive amounts of out of state fans.

Water Taxi to the game – It was GORGEOUS out

Outside my favorite Arena – St Pete Times Forum

Sea of Red at the Game

The rest of the time was spent walking around Tampa and spending quality time with C. Oh and of course, enjoying the pool and the view from our balcony!