Welcome to sunny (?) Ireland!

Hello from Ireland!

The trip over and the first day were a huge success!  The flight was great - business class is a whole new way to travel (don't worry though - I'm not getting to used to it). I do have to report that though my body was in much less pain after an 8 hour flight in business class, I don't know that I slept that much more.  I was just more comfortable.  The food was good though, and it was nice to be so well taken care of on an airplane.  (Oh, and Calista Flockheart and her son were one row back from me....I didn't get to meet her, but she was very nice.) We landed in Ireland around 9am local time and got to the hotel by around 10:30.  Getting through customs and out of the airport here was a breeze!!  Much easier than arriving in the US. :)  When we arrived at the hotel they didn't have our rooms ready yet, so we headed out to explore (and fight the urge to fall asleep).  Thankfully our hotel is right next to Trinity College which is one of the biggest attractions in Dublin as it houses the Book of Kells.  Unfortunately I was so tired that I forgot to bring my camera along for this excursion, but they didn't allow pictures of the Book of Kells anyway, so it was okay.  After that, we headed back to the hotel to shower up before Aoife and her boyfriend picked Evan and I up for a tour of Dublin. 

It was so great to see Aofie!!  Bryan met her on a study abroad to Belgium right before we got married.  She's lived in Dublin her whole life, so it was really nice to have a local show us around!  They took us to some really pretty parks, Temple Bar, Dublin Castle, lots of great streets, and we ate at Crack Bird.  Crack Bird is what they call a pop up restaurant.  Apparently that's becoming popular here (Evan said they're also popular on the west coast back in the States).  Anyway, it's where one restaurant fails, and another comes in but doesn't change any decor or anything. They just lease it for 6 months or so and focus on making great food.  It definitely didn't disappoint (and we were starving).  We liked it so much that we went to their sister restaurant (SkinFlint) for dinner.  It was an awesome gourmet pizza place.  After Crack Bird, we walked around some more and then experienced our first pub - Stag's Head.  I had a really good cider there.  I could definitely get used to the pub life. Very laid back.  Everyone here is sooo nice.  We had heard the Irish love Americans, and it's definitely true.  Everyone has been incredibly helpful and accommodating. 

Here are some pictures I took of the day.  (Sidenote: Bryan gave me a crash course in taking good pictures before I left, but they're certainly not up to par with what he normally captures on vacation...haha!  And many thanks to Amy for letting me borrow her camera for a whole month!!!)

I may not have emphasized this - but yesterday was AMAZING weather.  It was around 60 degrees and clear, blue skies.  Aofie made sure to remind us that this type of weather is incredibly rare for Ireland, and especially for Dublin.  We certainly weren't expecting it!

A view of part of the Dublin Castle (pretty sure I got that name right).

Another view.

Aoife and Patrick - they were such fantastic tour guides, and it was so sweet of them to take time out of their busy weekend to show us around Dublin.

Aoife and me

Stag's Head - the pub we went to. 

After dinner last night I crashed around 9:30pm local time, and slept until 8 this morning.  It was much needed! :)  This morning we got breakfast at a local place and are about to head out to catch the train to our town.  Can't wait to see what adventures await us. We've heard great things about the town we're going to, so I look forward to getting the "quintessential" Ireland experience....or so we've heard!

I'll update soon!  Love to you all!

Read more...

Packing

Have you ever packed for a whole month's worth of work and traveling?? This is definitely my first shot at it. Whew- there sure is a lot to think about!! Here's a little before picture of about 2/3rds of what I'm taking. Yikes!!

Though I'm getting sad to go, I'm still really excited! And this girl is even more excited bc someone special booked a ticket today to come visit me! :). That's right- Bryan will be coming to Ireland for the long Easter weekend. I couldn't be more excited! It'll be right in the middle of the trip so we'll only have to go two weeks at a time apart. Plus he's super excited to not miss out on seeing Ireland!

We have a fun date night tonight. Bryan's surprising me with dinner somewhere fun and then tomorrow will be spent relaxing and spending time together before I fly out around 9 pm. Amy will be here tomorrow too and I'm very excited about spending some time with her before I go. I'll let you all know when I am safely in Ireland!

Read more...

So this one time at work....

my manager called me into her office and asked if I wanted to go to Ireland.  True story!!!  Last Thursday as I sat down to eat my lunch, one of my managers asked me to come up to her office.  Long story short, she asked if I could go to Ireland for four weeks, and of course I said yes!

I leave next Saturday, and I promise to blog often.  I've been super busy getting things ready to go and trying to spend lots of time with the hubby.  It's unlikely that he'll be able to come over and visit so we're fitting in lots of quality time now!

That's all for now - just wanted to keep everyone in the loop!

Read more...

Hittin' the slopes

This time last week we were en route to a wonderful ski vacation with the Watsons in Utah!  We had a blast!  Our only complaint was that the vacation was too short (and our return flight home was HORRENDOUS - we'll never fly United again).  But on to the fun part. ;)  We flew out at 6am on Friday morning which was totally worth it b/c we were in Salt Lake by 9am local time.  We were thrilled to be able to do lunch with Bryan's great-aunt Dorothy.  She is the sweetest lady and we had so much fun spending time with her.  After that, we headed on over to Park City to check into our condo - which was AMAZING. Totally perfect for all of us!  That night, we drove back in to Salt Lake to spend some time with Bryan's grandparents.  The boys helped Grandpa Keddington with his new computer before we enjoyed some Asian Star for dinner.  If you've never heard us talk about Asian Star then I'll let you in on the secret.  It's the BEST asian cuisine ever!  Better than Doc Chey's, PF Chang, or any of the others.  If only it were closer to us.....oh well.  We thoroughly enjoyed our time with his grandparents and the great food.

The next morning we woke up early to eat breakfast in our cute little condo, and then we hit the slopes!  It was Andrea's first time skiing so we headed straight for the "bunny slopes".  After a morning of Andrea learning to stand on skis, ski, and appropriately fall down the mountain we took a break for some lunch at a great restaurant at the bottom of the slopes.  Oh, and in order to get to this restaurant, Andrea totally skied down a blue.  Yeah, she was awesome!  For the afternoon, us ladies headed back over to the greens so Andrea could get her ski legs under control while the boys explored more of the mountain.  That night we went to eat some very yummy Mexican and explore downtown Park City.  It's such a cute little town and we had a blast.

The next day was filled with more skiing, except for this time the boys  had some fun blues to take us down.  Remember - this was only Andrea's second day of skiing EVER and she was skiing blues ALL DAY LONG!  We were all so impressed!  The runs the boys found were so much fun and went by these huge houses.  We hung out on those blues (and a few others) for most of the day.  The ladies finally called it quits around 3:30 when our legs and knees couldn't take it anymore.  The weather was amazing, so we parked ourselves on some comfy chairs at the bottom of the final run to wait for the boys to come down.  It was truly a perfect day of skiing!!  That night we treated ourselves to an amazing dinner at J&G Grill at the St. Regis in Deer Valley.  It was ah-mazing.  I had some of the best salmon I've ever had.  It was quite memorable.

Our trip home was horrible.  There are no two ways about it.  We all stayed in good spirits (well as good of a mood as you can be when you're stuck in the Houston airport for 7 hours), but we will never fly with United again.  We found out on Sunday night around 9pm that our flight out of SLC the next morning (which was supposed to be at 8am) had been canceled (mind you - no one contacted us) and we had been rebooked on a 6am flight.  Awesome.  That night the boys tried to call the customer service line, but we found out they had shut it down due to high call volume.  B/c that's a total reasonable thing to do.  Just ignore all the complaints.  So we begrudgingly made it to our 6 am flight and arrived in Houston around 10am local time.  Since our flight into Houston was earlier than the original one, we were supposed to have a 3 hour layover.  We tried to make the best of it and played cards and found some yummy food.  As we were on our way to our gate, we found out our flight had been delayed.  Still trying to stay positive, we found a good window to watch the planes and played some family feud on the iPad.  Andrea and I also found a little "spa" and got a massage.  Hey - when life gives you lemons...  As we once again started to head over to our gate, we found out our flight to Atlanta had been canceled.  The weather was fine, and we were never given a reason for the cancellation.  With no other choice, we headed to the customer service line.  We were originally told they would rebook us on the 6am flight the NEXT MORNING.  Clearly they didn't know who they were dealing with b/c there was no way that was going to be okay with us.  Alex and Bryan stood in line for a very long time (likely over an hour and a half) while they tried to find something else for us.  We ended up all making the 5:30pm flight out (2 of us were flying stand-by at this point) and arrived back in Atlanta by around 9:30.  I only say all this to tell you to please never fly United.  I completely understand that things like this happen with airlines.  It wasn't the situation that we found maddening, but instead their complete and total lack of customer service.  For a company to treat their paying customers that way is unacceptable.

Well, enough about that!  The trip (minus the flight home) was a blast, and here are some pictures of our adventures!

Our painfully early wake-up time on the first day was worth it in order to have a full day in SLC.

Sunrise on the airplane. 

Spending time with Bryan's great-aunt Dorothy. 

Ebby in the snow.  Isn't she just the cutest? 

Bryan and I with his grandparents.  

So there's this awesome lift at The Canyons called the Orange Bubble.  It's covered and the seats are heated. 1%, what? ;) 

That's me - tearing down the slopes! 

Andrea learning.  I can't explain to you how great she did....such a pro! 

After lunch on our second day of skiing.  It was a sunny and warm day of skiing.  Couldn't have asked for better weather. 

Alex may have fallen over while trying to show off.  Of course we took a picture...

The view looking back down at The Canyons. 

Enjoying Park City at night. 

Headed up on the non-Orange Bubble lift. 

The funicular at the St. Regis.  There's a lower lodge and an upper lodge.  We had to take the funicular up to the restaurant in the upper lodge.  It was awesome, and yes, we are easily amused. 

Read more...

Isn't it ironic?

It's certainly true that most young couples begin to plan for their future when they get married.  Bryan and I were no different.  You start to think about the big stuff (for us this started in college, so there were more decisions) - what firms will we work at?  when will we buy a home?  where should we travel to? when should we have kids? how should we set up our finances?

Of course nothing ever goes as planned, but I've certainly learned a big lesson: "Never Say Never".  Anyone else singing Justin Bieber now? No, just me?  Ok.  Our first big mistake: We decided that we wouldn't buy a "fancy camera" until we had kids.  Well, that didn't stick, because we planned an awesome trip to Italy after one year of being married and it just didn't seem right to not have a good camera.  So we bought our first DSLR.  Then, we decided it was fun to take pictures, but it would probably just stay a very low key kind of hobby.  No extra lenses, etc.  Wrong again.  Bryan needed more zoom, so why  not buy the big fancy lens so that you don't have to have two lenses?  Because why would you ever want to carry around more than one lens.  Wrong again.  After the zoom lens, then we needed the indoor lens.  After the indoor lens we needed the upgraded DSLR that was almost professional grade and could shoot video.  Do you follow where I'm going with this?  We were wrong a lot.  We were so wrong that we not only bought a camera before we had a kid, but we have now also decided to start a photography business.  That's right - I would like to present to you Stillwagon Photography. 

It was actually a really easy decision to take this leap of faith.  Shortly after we got back from Paris, it was evident that Bryan's pictures were powerful.  Not only to us because they reminded us of what a great time we had, but others also told us how much the pictures evoked emotions with them. It seemed like a true waste of talent to not do more.  It was also apparent that Bryan would prefer to spend his freetime either outdoors or shooting photography.  So why not combine those two things??  (Pretty genius if you ask me.)  There's never a "right time" to do something like this, so, here we are!

Before you jump to any conclusions - no one is quiting their job.  This is a purely weekend related adventure. Bryan is the photographer extroidinarie, CEO, and the brains behind the whole machine and I am the CFO/on-site assistant/Director of Design.  :)  (I give myself a new title on a weekly basis.  Hey, with two people there are a lot of roles to fill....)  We are both so excited for this new journey!!  The feedback we've gotten thus far has been incredibly encouraging. 

I've always been proud of my hubby, but with the launch of this business I have to say I couldn't possibly be more proud of him.  This guy has spent almost every evening and weekend since Christmas researching, designing, practicing, and talking about this business.  It is rare to see someone with so much passion for something!  I am so happy that he now has a fun outlet for his talent.

Obviously, we haven't gotten here without a little bit ton of help from our friends, and I would like to specifically thank the Watsons and the Andersons for tirelessly helping us in this new venture.  Rusty and Kirsten have not only driven around Atlanta photo scouting with us, but they have also poured over website ideas, editing tips, and given us constant feedback on things we desperately needed another set of eyes on.  Also, we credit much of the graphic appeal of the website and the facebook design to Alex.  He designed the logo, came up with the colors/textures, as well as helped Bryan on numerous occasions with design questions.  Without you guys, we'd still be a few months behind our scheduled launch date of March 1.  We cannot thank you enough, and to anyone reading this: if you ever need graphic design assitance - Alex is your man, and Rusty is your go-to person for any type of video needs.  Check them out!

So what are you waiting for??  Go check out the website, twitter, and facebook pages! And tell all your friends b/c we have a March referral reward (click on the "Specials" tab)!

Read more...