luck of the irish

2011: Dublin, Ireland | 2012: Lynchburg, Virginia | 2013: Paris, France | 2014: Rome, Italy

Happy, happy St. Patrick's Day.

This day is stirring up some mighty lucky and lovely memories of my marriage. Travels and parties and smiles fill my mind like shamrock confetti. This day has been very good to us. I have always adored St. Patrick's Day, because growing up as an O'Neil it was a rather fun and celebratory part of my heritage. My dad would always capitalize on our surname, and we'd all eat corned beef and cabbage and wear way too much green. It was the best.

Dusty came into my life in high school, and he was brought into the Irish fold. He would come over and enjoy our over-the-top celebrations. One year we had Irish soda bread, Irish cream coffee, Scottish eggs, Guinness stew... we made the Dublin population jealous with our enthusiasm.

2009: home sweet Arizona.

I find myself feeling incredibly nostalgic today. Every St. Patrick's Day so far in our 4 years of marriage has been a magical mystery tour of new places and experiences. 2015 has been a year of change and heartache and adjustment, reacquainting ourselves with adulthood and life in Arizona. So it's fitting that we're here, calmly celebrating with family. It's a great time to wear green and look forward, to cherish each other and share confetti-filled dreams.

P.S. Some Irish music/bands to listen to today: 

New: Bear's Den | Kodaline | Needtobreathe

Favorites: P.S. I Love You soundtrack | The Corrs | Enya | Flogging Molly

Or you can go full Celtic and listen to songs like I'll Tell My Ma, Black Is The Colour, Drunken Sailor, Scarborough Fair, Molly Malone (Cockles and Muscles).

wanderlust wednesday

Snapshots from Dublin, Ireland. St. Patrick's Day, 2011. 

My husband and I had a cozy honeymoon in the mountains our first week of marriage. We were married during Christmas break (on 1-1-11), so we had one semester of college left. We saved our money and decided to take a much bigger honeymoon trip during spring break. We had originally thought of taking an Alaskan cruise, but Dustin came across the same trip to Ireland that my family had taken together a year earlier - the trip that Dustin proposed to me on!

Of course we decided to repeat the trip together as a married couple, and it was magical. Since it was March instead of December, the weather was a bit warmer (although still quite cold), the grass was much greener, and we were able to visit many incredible little towns we hadn't been to before.
 We hiked up to the Witches Hat, we saw the Cliffs of Moher, we visited Waterford and Galway, and we even celebrate St. Patrick's Day in the great city of Dublin. We were in the beating green heart of Irish enthusiasm. Our hotel surprised us that morning with little corsages of fresh clovers, which we enthusiastically pinned to our coats before heading out for our day of Dublining. We stood for hours to enjoy the rather grand spectacle that is the St. Patrick's Day Parade in Dublin - it was both beautiful and strange and sometimes dark, and we found ourselves baffled and fascinated by their displays of color and music and characters.

It was so cold in the shade that we were overwhelmed with gratitude when we found a coffee shop that was open a few doors down towards the end of the parade, and eventually we wandered into a warm pub that was crowded with green-clad people. I ended up getting horribly sick towards the end of the trip, probably due to the hours in the cold, but it was worth it. (Although in hindsight I should have been wearing much warmer clothes. I was way too persistent about wearing my shamrock-green tights).

One of my favorite pictures above is of the three clearly drunk Irishwomen who demanded, rather excitedly, that we take their picture. I was also flashed by a redheaded Irishman later on, which I'm quite sure he doesn't remember.

It was an incredible day - one that I hope never fades as time goes by. It is a memory that is still as full of color and hollering as the day I stood there with my new husband, rosy-cheeked and freezing.