Day trip to Kilkenny

So today we drove 2 1/2 hours up to Kilkenny to visit our mosaicist friend from 2002. She and her fiance were having a joint exhibition of their work. It was so nice to see her again and 2 of her 3 boys. The 14 year old is now 18, but looks basically the sameas he did in '02. The 7 or 8 year old is now 11 or 12 and has totally changed - taller, longer hair, braces, young-man-face instead of kid-face. After seeing the exhibition, them, a bit of Kilkenny, and such, we got to drive 2 1/2 hours back here. We were glad to get out of the car at the end!

On our way up, we met a group of 20 or so bicyclists in matching yellow jerseys stopped near an intersection. Must have been a fund raiser or something. They were accompanied by an ambulance in case of emergency. Not that unexpected... but only in Ireland would the ambulance drivers be standing around smoking. Hmm... I don' t know about you, but I've heard they're a bit of a health risk. Ah, at least they didn't have pints in their hands!

I gotta tell y'all another Girl-brag, too. We've driving home and there's a rainbow off to the side. I point it out to Pumpkin. She observes it for a while, then tell us, "Stripes in there." Yup - pretty complex for not yet 2!

She doesn't have it all figured out yet though... she kept telling Daddy to "catch it!" and was rather put out when he wouldn't catch that rainbow for her. Reminded me of the time in MN when she wanted me to "make sun ... come up" 'cuz she didn't like that it was getting dark out. Guess she's got rather high expectations of her parents!

Tomorrow we're invited over to the wood-burning-pizza-oven coworkers for (you guessed it) pizza! Yay! Should be tasty, and Pumpkin is probably going to go nuts over their two new dogs. Better hurry up and go to bed so I've got the stamina to keep up with her around puppies!