Its a Beginning!

So all my life I have dreamt of going to Ireland. It was even my parents dream. They talked about it often. They said that some day they were going to go when my brother and I were grown and out of the house and they had saved enough money that they were going to go. But towards the end of Moms life she said to me that is was just their "pipe dream" something they would talk about. They would sit and have long discussion of where they wanted to go and what they would do there. So my entire life I have grown up with the same dream. The dream of walking the along the rolling green hills and standing next the beautiful stone walls. Hard to believe that my dream is actually going to be coming true!  Dan and I have been saving for this for quite some time. I didn't want it to be just a "pipe dream" for me. I wanted to be able to go no matter how long it took me to save up to go. And with having lost Mom this past June it has pushed me all that much more to go.  As a tribute to my parents I will be taking ( well sneaking is more like it) some of their ashes with me and spreading them in all over Irealnd. But there are  two places in particular, one is in a little village called Cong which is where the movie "The Quiet Man" with John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara was filmed as this was one of Mom and Dads favorite movies and the other place is Maguires Bridge in the County Fermagnah as that is where I have been able to trace some of Mom's ancestors back too.
With the Blog I am hoping to keep friends and family posted  on our travels. I will do the best I can to write daily while we are there and to post pictures.

Our Travel Plans:

We will be flying out of LAX on Aug 31 to London where we will be staying with my Girlfriend Dawn and her family. By the way for those of you who don't know. Dawn is my sister across the sea. We have become  great friends since the day we  "met" on myspace about 4 yrs ago now I think. We write and talk on the phone often however this will be the first time we will actually get to see each other face to face and we are both quite excited!
anyway so we will be spending a week with Dawn and her family in Norwich. Then we will fly back out of London to Dublin on September 10 from there we will be in Ireland until September 29 when we are due to fly back to London then back to the US. Our plan is to just drive all over Ireland. Go where we want to go and see what we want to see!

Well feel free to post any comments you want as I will do the best I can to keep up!  I also have a facebook acct where I will be posting pictures (probably on a more regular basis then here to be honest) so if you have a facebook acct and would like to add me you can find me under Maureen Hill Jensen.

Well I will keep you all posted on how things are going as the time gets closer!