Goodbye May, Hello Vacation!

As of 11:00 today, we are officially on vacation for one month! One month, can you believe it? One week on a cruise, one week resting from our cruise, one week in Scotland, and one week doing whatever we want. Probably sleeping. And eating ice cream.

We kicked off our holiday- a little bit of British vocab right there-by grilling some burgers with a side of sweet potato fried. Baked, of course. Then we lounged in the late afternoon sunshine (the temperature was 73!), did some reading, Pinteresting (Forrest), and blogging (me). 

Life is goooood right now.

 Don't be too jealous, I have four more years of school staring me right in the face in September. But until then, there are several more adventures calling my name. I have a feeling that the excitement isn't going to stop once we get back to the states.. there's something about being married to the person you like most in the whole world. That Forrest just makes everything more fun.

Have I mentioned how excited I am for this cruise?? 

It's almost embarrassing how much time I spent trying to get that bee. Bees are fast!

Finn MacCool says hello.

I should probably confess that I'm not even halfway through my Ireland photos at this point. We're still on day three. I know. We saw a lot of stuff, okay? At this rate, I'll be done with Ireland in six months and still have 2,000 photos of our cruise to sort through. To be clear, I haven't actually taken 2,000 photos yet, but that is the number I foresee. There's a large possibility for more. I'll let you know in two weeks.

So these are pictures of the Giant's Causeway which was probably my favorite thing to see on our whole trip. Finn MacCool was the giant who built it, in case you were wondering. Finn was casually going about his business one day when the Scottish giant, Benandonner, started taunting him. If you know Finn MacCool (and I do), you know that he is not one to take insults. Naturally, he started starting throwing  clods of dirt across the channel at Benandonner. This, of course, resulted in a landbridge to Scotland. Finn, upon realizing the greater size of the opposing giant, had his wife dress him up as a baby. When Benandonner came over the new land bridge, he saw "Finn's son" (the giant baby) and became so terrified of the size that Finn must be to produce such enormous offspring that he destroyed most of the bridge on his retreat back to Scotland.  Finn MacCool was saved and that is a true story.

Obviously there are variations to this story, but mine is the right one.*

 

 

*Or if you must, the scientific explanation: A volcano erupted and the basalt lava cooled rapidly, resulting in hexagonal columns. Look it up yourself, sheesh.

Memorial Day

 

 

 

  

Burghley House is one of the Treasure Houses of England. I've wanted to visit it for almost two years. Several movies have been filmed here such as The Da Vinci Code and Pride and Prejudice. It's a really pretty house, obviously. And the gloves belonged to Queen Victoria. 

We spent the day wandering through the enormous rooms and enjoying lunch in the garden. It was a really lovely day to celebrate my veteran. We walked hand in hand through the sculpture garden pondering when we would be able to afford our own mansion and sat together on a bench by the lake. We even shared an ice cream cone. My husband is so dreamy (I'm only being a little bit sappy here).

Thankfully, we had wonderful weather for Memorial Day. We have been sunning ourselves the past few days to prepare for our first cruise in a week. It has kind of been a sunny miracle. Our pasty selves have really needed it since the temperature hasn't really topped 55F in the past few weeks and we are pretty excited to finally have some summer in our lives. This week in the Mediterranean may be all the summer we get if the last month has been any indication. Stupid English weather.