Sorry for the blank post - I actually wrote a lot but it appears to have vanished!! I'll try again.

Covering 2 months in Ireland briefly: Coming down to Newmarket, we stopped in on Siobhan and her kids (pic) for an hour or so over tea and scones. Arrived at Granny's house to find that Kevin (uncle) had turned the heating on max and the house was so hot and stuffy that it was actually hard to draw breath upstairs. So we opened all the windows for a while.

Joan comes down from Dublin every few weekends. I've spent most of my time with Kevin, as he has a lot of free time and so is acting as my chauffer/guide around the place. According to him, andthe number of houses/people he keeps pointing out around the village, I seem to be related to the majority of the population here! We've gone up to the Cliffs of Moher, which are, deservedly, a great tourist spot. But this year, apparently as a result of a combination of a mild winter and the unseasonably warm weather, the cliffs were swarming with bugs of all shapes and sizes. Picture holding a mozzie net over your head to prevent breathing them in.

Granny came back from Spain on 17th April. It's great listening to all her stories of my mum and everyone when they were young, and looking at all the old photos. She has a diary written by my great great grandfather in the late 1800s which makes for very interesting reading. We went to visit my cousin Helene (pic) who visited us in PNG in 1994. We also checked out Quin Abbey (pics) which is a wonderful old church/abbey filled with gravestones and plaques filled with history. One room holds the plaques for the noble family who used to live there before it was an abbey. It's amazing reading the inscriptions on the plaques through the generations.

I've been to Ennis and Limerick a number of times - done a bit of shopping, I admit! I visited Tom (uncle) and Louise with their kids Liam and David in Ennis, and stayed for the night. i have also seen Pat and Tracey's place in Shannon. Their boys, Fergus and Dillan, come to Granny's on wednesdays while Tracey works.

I've been to a few hurling and comoghiue(spelling? - girls hurling) games as well. Hurling can be either skillful and fun to watch, or brutal with every second moment cringe-worthy.

I've also been visiting Dad's side of the family in and around Limerick. I've stayed with Noeleen and Paul a couple of times, and their kids (Jake and Amy) are adorable. They've takent o me like a big sister and the affection is returned - although I'm still trying to match their endless energy and enthusiasm for games that involve an lot of running (on my part anyway)! Mum, Dad, I've included a pic of their house. We all (inc Helena and Jack from Dublin) went to Andrea's for Easter. (Andrea has Ian-fiance, and Alan-7yo). That was great fun - Andrea cooked and the kids all played around outside. Jack had the younger kids trying to catch a glimpse of a family of bigfoots he spotted in the bushes by the stream - I would have liked to have seen that myself!

I'm dead tired - it's near midnight and i only just discovered that this post didn't make it to the blog the 1st time around, so I've had to write it from scratch again. Anyway, I'm off to Italy in a couple of days so my next post will regale you with the delights of Rome!!