As Promised

As promised here are some snow pics, we got about 4 inches or so of snow last night. Yay! I love this season!

Let it snow!

The snow is coming down heavy now. We may get up to 5 inches.

I absolutely love to watch the snow. I really want to just sit next to a crackling fire in the fireplace with some hot chocolate. Even better if there was someone to sit next to! ;-)

Well we canceled the Youth activity tonight because of the snow.

I'll post some pics of the snow later on.

Now I gotta go drive in it!

More Ireland and Scotland trip pics

Here is the video slideshow I made from some of the highlights of the trip.

It's about 5 min. I'll be working on a longer and better slideshow once I get pics from everybody else's cameras.

Most of the pics are from Ireland but half way through you'll start seeing some Scotland. All the photos of the castle and the bus ride are in Scotland. The Castle is Sterling castle, and off in the distance on the photo's where your looking over a wall and your way up is the monument to William Wallace. Of course it was built long long before Braveheart. The Castle itself was built in the 1500's.

Now the first clip is of Mike, he calls it the Mungret Mambo. Never a dull moment around Mike.

If you have any questions about the video just leave a comment or email me.

Enjoy the video!

Live Writer is awesome

Just download windows live writer. I really like it so far. It's got a nice clean UI and it downloaded all my settings from my blog in just a couple of clicks!

We got our first snow just last night! Got about an inch or so, we are supposed to get 2-5 inches tomorrow.

If we get a good amount of snow I'll post some pics of it.

I'm finally thinking of getting a mac. Not switching to mac though, just adding a mac. I like windows and windows will always be my primary OS but I'm going to try out mac. Well, I'll only be able to give it a try if I win the bid on eBay.

We'll see what happens. It might be nice to travel with or something. It's a PowerBook G4 titanium. Looks nice and the battery life is pretty decent.

The HD-DVD player I got on eBay is working perfectly, just need to get some HD-DVD's. I'm really looking forward to the release of Lord of The Rings on HD-DVD. I've heard that they have pushed back the release date because they want to release it on a dual-format disc with HD-DVD on one side and Blueray on the other. I guess it's taking longer to manufacture. Just plain movies look great on this player because it will upconvert a standard DVD to almost HD. Very nice.

Well enough rambling, gotta go get some sleep. Have to get up early and hit the Cisco CCNA 4. Got a skills final coming up next week and I'm behind on my labs. argh.

Wow, it's already morning.

Well, Good Morning!

I love eBay

After a short delay with UPS I am finally a proud new owner of an HD-DVD player. Yay!
I'm still looking for a multilink adapter for my Silicon Graphics monitor. When I find one I'm set.

It's finally warmed up to 30 degrees (that's Fahrenheit for my international readers)

Well gotta go do some Christmas shopping!

I'm so tired of being lonely

Yeah, I know it's been a long time since I've posted. And yes I remember I promised some pics of Scotland. I will post them soon! It's been pretty crazy.

Just got done watching a great movie, ok, 2 great movies. You know, it's just not the same. Even if it's a really great movie it's just not the same if you don't have someone to enjoy it with. But not just movies, It could be anything. Getting a coffee, a bite to eat, catch a movie. I so dearly miss having a friend with which to do all that and more. It's no fun being lonely.
I wish I had somebody that I could just call and say "Hey you wanna get a coffee?". Someone to talk to, someone to just enjoy being with.
I don't know why, I just feel so isolated. It's weird. At times I just want to get away from everything and find a calm place to be alone, but at the same time I long to be with someone that would be a friend.

I guess I had to get that off my chest.

Well it's going to be an early morning of shoveling ice.

Good night all.

Finally home!

Well we finally flew in last night! Got to watch Shrek 3 and Transformers for the first time on the airplane.
After being up for more than 24 hours I crashed last night. I'm still tired but that's the jet lag. It will take me a few days to get re-adjusted. Before I went to bed last night I upgraded my zune firmware. I love the new interface!

Well I'm going to go but I'll post some more pics later!

The End of another Chapter

Well it's finaly time fly back home. I'm ready to come home, I would normaly wish I could be here longer but there was a couple of people on our team this time that really spoiled it, not the whole trip but alot of it. It's very sad.
Ok enough dwelling on this. We had alot of good times too here. I'll be posting some more pics but it will have to wait till I get home!

Over all this trip was great and I won't dwell on the negative.

We leave on the bus soon for the airport. This is my last post from Ireland... until the next time!

So, until next time!

Finally back from Scotland

Well we flew back from Scotland last night. I must say, parts of Scotland are nice but I love Ireland so much more! I'll post some pics later on today from Scotland.
Right now though I have loads of computer work to do.
You know, I'm starting to pick up the Irish accent again, that's fun. I don't look forward to loosing it, I love this accent.

Off to Scotland!

Here's just a couple of pics from last night.

Here's me, Kathleen, and Dorothy.

And here's the view from my room on 3rd floor. You can even see some mountains in the distance and to the right you can see just a little of Limerick.

And this is the view from my parents room, you can see more of downtown Limerick.

More More Pics

Here's one from yesterday morning before church. You can actually sleep in on Sunday since service doesn't start till 11.

This one's of worship. They let me play guitar and I loved it! The walls behind me are all marble, wow.

Here's Pastor Mom and I outside the church.

Here I am in Adare, I think those thatched roofs look awesome.

Here's another in Adare with Pastor Mom in front of some thatched roofs.

In front of the gates to Adare Manor.

Scotland here we come!

So in a couple of hours we are leaving for Glasgow, Scotland for 2 nights. Can't wait! Scotland is a first for all of us.

So here's some pics. The first one is a close up of the church built in the 1200's.

The second pic is the the church we are staying and working at and was built in the early 1800's.

The 3rd pic is me with Anne, one of my best friends in Ireland. The next pic is me with Dorothy, also one of my best friends in Ireland. She's the pastor here and also head of Limerick Christian Centre and Christian school.

I'll post some more pics shortly!

Gotta love mango juice

So had a great service this morning. I had a blast playing on the worship team! Anne let me borrow her acoustic and it was great.
I didn't get to stay for the message though they asked me to help out with the kids sunday school. Those kids are the best! The will melt your heart.
I was working with kids ranging from 3-9 yrs old and I had loads of fun.

We spent the afternoon in Adare, that's where 3 yrs ago I was supposed to get married. We had everything lined up and even our own marrage consultant from Adare Manor. Here's a link to their website so you can see the place I'm talking about. http://www.adaremanor.com/
Since then my fiance has left me and is going to marry someone else sometime next year. She's even on this trip and it doesn't even seem to bother her. It doesn't bother me either, our "relationship" seemed so fake anyways.

Now today we were in the town of Adare but not at the manor house.
Had a blast! Got a gift for a certain someone, that's as far as I'm going with that. ;-)

After we got back we had to go back into town for some shopping for groceries which was great since I got to hang out with Kathleen which is another great friend of mine here.

Well I've been in this suite all day! Since the day is almost done I might as well stick with it.
I've just finished my fantasic mango juice I got while we were out and I've gotta run I think we are doing a movie or something so I must go!

Have a great day everyone!

Finaly got some pics!

Finaly got a few pics to put up.

The first is a view from where we are staying. The tall building in the background was built in the early 1200's. Now that's old!

The second one is downtown Limerick on the bus. Takes alot to get used to driving on the right side of the car and shifting with your left hand!

More updates do come and pics from Dolans tonight. Dolans is a very famous pub with great live music! It's got great food if I remember right, everthing is a pub though in Ireland.

Another day in Paradise

Yet another day is going by faster than we should like, hence the saying "time flies when your having fun".
Things didn't start so well this morning though, only a few had gotten a shower when all of a sudden there was no more water. The water simply stopped running, which means no flushing toilets, running sinks, or showers. Very frustraighing and finely about 2-3 hours later it turned out we just needed to reset a pump. So finaly running water for all.A very relieved all! It turns out that it was only our floor that didn't have water, if the whole building was without water they would have had to cancel school. They run a christian K-12 school here. Today the students performed for us and they sounded amazing. It was incredible hearing their voices echoing off of the marble and stone walls, absolutely beautiful.

Today I've had the privilege of working on 2 four book + cd bundles which should be in stores sometime soon, not sure when exactly.
It's a new series called the Dear God kids Children Bible Stories.
Each series will have 4 Dear God kids books and a CD which you can read along with. Of course the person reading on the CD is Anne FitzGerald who originated, created, and wrote the series. The storytelling is fantastic Anne is an incredible storyteller and the best I've heard.
So what I've been helping with is making the labels for the CD's and duplicating the CD's. Lot's of fun!

My apologies for not getting any pics up yet, there have been a few setbacks with retrieving photo's from my phone. I just got an Irish phone service called O2 and I haven't gotten the settings right for being able to email the photo's to myself yet and they didn't make a data caple or my phone. I'll get it fixed soon! I love iWireless though! Any phone you buy from them is already unlocked so all I had to do was get the new sim card and I had Irish service!
Well I must get some more work done before it gets too late.

Have a good night lads!

Hear a moo there a moo...

After being up for about 24 straight hours I finally got to bed last night.
It's actually warmer here than at home, it's only in the 50's, doesn't get too much colder than that. There is one thing that some visitors to Ireland have a hard time getting used to. They allways turn the heat off at night and that includes the hot water too, but the comforters here on the beds are so incredibly warm you wouldn't know the heat wasn't on, too bad you can't get a blanket this warm at home.
There are some cattle in the back here and the are mooing so loud so often! A few of our group have allready gotten tired of it, but it makes for a nice alarm though ha ha.
Last night was incredible, we had just a time of fellowship with some of the irish here and it was a blast! Sharing stories singinging hymns accompanied with accordion, some kind of recorder (can't remember the name of it) and guitar and of course I was plaing the guitar. Anne let me borrow her guitar. For those of you who don't know Anne, she has been to Living Hope a few times, but that was a long time ago. She is the world renown artist who is probably best known in the US for theDear God kids, if you haven't seen them before you can find some of the Dear God kids stuff at the dollar store. Anyways, she is my best friend here in Ireland we had a fantastic time last night!

So this afternoon we will pretty much just be hanging out downtown Limerick. There are alot of cool things there, especially down by the river. If you look on google maps search Limerick Ireland. Look for the river that goes right into the middle, that's where we will be this afternoon (about 4 or 5 am back home).
Tonight will be loads fun, we are going to a medieval banquet tonight at Bunratty Castle. Which is a real castle built in 1425 and has since been restored obviously. The banquet is set in the era of when this castle was in it's prime and everything is incredible! The food is absolutely amazing. The first time we were here back in 2001 we had a banquet there and I had the best ribs I've ever eaten, who know's maybe that's what we will have tonight. All the give you to eat with is a dagger and your hands. I'll try to post some pics of it. I've had some trouble emailing the photo's off my phone though, still trying. I'm really enjoying my Irish cell phone though, I've got an irish number and everything which course I'm not going to give out here, if you want my number just email me and I'll give it to you.
So off I go on another beautiful day in Ireland!

Welcome to Ireland

Well here I am at Mungret College, Limerick, Ireland!
Survived the long plane ride and got here at about 8:00 this morning, which would be about 2:00 am back at home. I think I'm gonna just stay up all day and go to bed tonight. That should lessen the effects of the jet lag considerably. I'm already working on fixing the computers here. Fun Fun!!

I'll be posting some pics later. The interned here is a bit more sparce than I anticipated so I'm not sure how often I'll be able to update.

It is so good to be back in Ireland!

Ready to Fly!

Ok we are all packed up and about to leave for the airport!
Ireland here we come!!
Hope I'm not sick on the plane.

Appreciate your prayers for this trip everyone!

More posts to follow.