Becky, I just got back from Italy a week ago. I am attaching a picture of a roofless cathedral that reminds me of some of the ones in your pictures. I'm glad you enjoyed your vacation despite the airline/ luggage snafus. I apologize for Philadelphia's bad weather (my home town). Nice to see the picture of our skyline. I only had one hour fifteen minutes between flights in Frankfurt on the way home. Sounds like enough time but the flight from Rome to Frankfurt is on a regional airplane and they leave you off on the tarmac and load you onto a bus to get to the terminal. Well, the flight was full of Asians and Midwesterners returning from their tours. Man those people are s-l-o-w. No offense to the Midwest folks in our group, but you sure are not in a hurry. ;) I was sweating bullets as I weaved in and out among the slowest people on earth. Then I ran through the airport (including those people mover things) to get to my gate. Thank heavens boarding was delayed! I even had time to use the bathroom. I had awful jet lag for about three days. I also had the end of Daylight Savings twice -- once in Italy and a week later at home. My internal clock is totally screwed up, plus I completely missed October (was gone three weeks), so it feels like I went directly from late summer to winter. Anyway, my trip was awesome and it sounds like yours was,too. I'd love to see Ireland.

Love all those little "gnomey" houses! Also all the rock-work walls and structures; they must be hundreds of years old. Wonderful shots, thank you so much. Looks like the kids enjoyed the water, so I assume it wasn't too cold. You had a trip of a lifetime and got to enjoy it with family. It doesn't get any better than than that!

Ha! I hope this doesn't happen to you either! We're getting prices for pavers now. If we can't afford the whole thing in pavers, we'll do concrete with some kind of nice looking border (stamped or pavers). I have a landscape designer doing the planning so that I don't mess it all up and it ends up looking haphazard. Gotta move some trees, beds, build a new front walk. It's all connected. This mistake has messed up the timing, but maybe it'll end up a good thing; forced me to start the project.

Bamboo IS a grass....just a very tall growing type. Although it's never smelled like a lawn or turf grass to me, I guess it's possible. Tell him to take a shower :-)