Almost Time To Come Home

Hey Everybody...

We're in Dublin tonight. And we've had another great (and exhausting) day. The highlight of the day was the boys singing a concert at St. Patrick's Cathedral. What a place! It was beautiful, and completely unlike any other church / cathedral I've ever seen.

We had two periods of 'free time' today... and boy did we take advantage of them. We walked (and walked and walked) all throughout Dublin. A sprawling city, with almost no skyline. In fact, I learned today there is only 1 building in the entire town more than ten stories tall. The ret of the city is a series of 'Georgian" flats, nothing is over 6 or so stories. But, as with several of the other towns we've visited, a very lively town with all kinds of live performances here, there and everywhere.

Great day in general.

A couple things I've learned while in Ireland...

1) I may simply be INCAPABLE of trying to cross a street with cars driving on the 'wrong' side without nearly getting KILLED
2) Boys, no matter who they are or who they've been raised by or who is looking after them at any given time, WILL BE BOYS
3) The Irish people are a lovely people and seem genuinely glad to have us (stupid) Americans as visitors (the 'stupid'... inside joke for Cameron and I)
4) The song 'Long Way to Tipperary' is NOT in fact about the city in Ireland. In war-time... the English soldiers would be out for 6 - 8 weeks at a time. Many of whom would die before the end of their first assignment. But for those who were fortunate enough, they would then return to London for 'leave'. There was a favorite house in the 'red light' district called 'The Tipperary', run by a woman FROM the real Tipperary. And that's how that song came to be... war-torn soldiers looking forward to leave (and, I guess, simply surviving).

I had a very nice experience tonight. Ya see, dinner along the way has been the boys eating together and the rest of those of us on the trip eating with one another. Which is fine. Most of the folks on this trip are friends with one another and it's always just a mix-n-match at dinner time. Me, personally... I've just been floating from table to table each passing night. It's been a way to get to know a lot of the folks on this trip. Well, tonight, I had already figured out who to eat with... and hadn't realized the boys weren't, in fact, all eating together... and as I was sitting down with my dinner companions I hear Cameron's voice... calling me to come sit with him. Maybe not a huge deal... and lord knows by dinner we've had more than enough of one another each day. But he may never know how much I appreciated him calling me over and offering me the chair he proudly announced he'd saved for me. Simple, I know. But those are the things that usually gettcha, ya know.

The boys sing mass tomorrow (where, I'm sorry, but I'm just not sure), and then will perform a concert at the Guinness Brewery (YAY!... lol). Tomorrow is our last day / night so I don't really know what to expect. All I know is before we hit the beds tomorrow night, we have to be packed and ready to go. We've got an insanely early wake-up and departure on Friday morning.

O.K. --- Cameron and I are gonna play some cards and call it a night. OOOOOOH! don't want to forget, many of you following along are also aware of Paxton's eye injury. Got word today as of this latest Dr. appointment, he is ONE HUNDRED PERCENT! And does not need to go back to the eye doc for ONE WHOLE YEAR. It's been a bit of a saga, but thank goodness he's fine and things ar lookin' good. Way to go, Pax!

Night folks... have a good one. We'll be putting something up for you tomorrow.

dk