Dublin, Ireland

A trip to Ireland has long been on Tom and I's list of places to see and this year we went during the week long St. Patrick's Day festivities! We planned the trip with two other great couples. It was just a short weekend trip, but was packed with fun!

This is the plane we took to Dublin: This is the Temple Bar area, which is a whole street full of Irish pubs:
This is Tom jumping out in front of me while i was trying to take a nice picture of our friends David and Brianna:

And here is the way the picture SHOULD look!

This is the pub that we visited that evening, they had a live band:

This is the Jameson factory where they make Jameson whiskey. We did a tour of the factory and tasted some samples:

Out in front of the Jameson factory:

After the tour, we had someone take a picture of all of us:

Then, we walked over to the Guinness Storehouse and took a tour of that and sampled some Guinness!!

Me and Tom during the sampling portion of the tour:

We walked around Dublin and took in some of the sights. We saw the St. Patrick's Cathedral, very appropriate since it was almost St. Patrick's Day!

We also saw the Dublin Castle:

We saw a lot of these brick buildings with really colorful front doors:

There were many different activities going on around town for St. Patrick's Day, one of which was a street carnival. We arrived and found the smallest carnival we had ever seen! But we rode the ferris wheel anyway before we moved on:

It was called the Jubilee Wheel:

Here we are on the Jubilee Wheel:

Next, we went to a busy street downtown with a lot of street performers and spotted a Starbucks, so we stopped in for a cup of coffee:

Tom really liked this guitar player's sign. It says "Ninja's killed my family, need money for kung-fu lessons", hahaha!

Fasching!!

In some parts of Germany, they celebrate Fasching with parades and street festivals. There is one such celebration in the city of Mainz, which is just across the river from Wiesbaden. Tom and I decided to attend this year with our friends Josh and Chariti. It was quite a scene at the parade, check it out!

Marriage Retreat

In February, Tom and I were given the opportunity to attend a free marriage retreat put on by the Army. It was held at the Edelwiess Resort in Garmisch, Germany and started on a Thursday and went until Sunday. Luckily, I was able to get the time off of work, and we drove down on Thursday evening. The Chaplain who was in charge of the retreat was very nice and did an excellent job of balancing class time and free time. We had discussions about communication and the challenges of a military marriage. We had a lot of fun and learned some things too :)

We went for a little hike with our friends Matt and Stephanie.

And thier adorable little boy Lucca, he's keeping warm under mom's jacket :)

Then, Tom and I went to the Swarovski Museum in Austria one day because Tom had never been there and wanted to see it.

Tom, checking things out
The cool crystal dome!