Marriage Proposals and Meet-ups

We got back from Galway around 5:30pm on Friday and headed home to relax and make some cocktails and assess our plans for the evening.  And we may or may not have texted Connor from my phone to see what he was doing that night.  Which may or may not have sent us into a dressing frenzy about what to wear when we saw him.  (I know Molly and I both tried on at least 2 outfits and to my knowledge he wasn't even interested in either of us.  DANGIT!  Oh yeah, and I'm married.  Whatever.)  We went to Steps of Rome, a cute little Italian place, and then stop by The Stag's Head, another famously old Dublin pub.  We stand around awhile sipping our drinks, enjoying each other's company on Molly's last night, listening to the music, watching a slutty girl ask a diffferent guy in the pub to dance after every song, making a total fool of herself, etc.

The girl is suddenly near our table talking with Molly and intermittently whispering things and yelling things at her, and we see her grab Molly's arm and scream at her friend Eddie to come over to where they're standing.  "ED!  This is Molly!" she yells.  "She's American and it's her last day in Dublin, do you wanna kiss her?" and then walks off to grab another guy to dance with while ol' Eddie takes a sudden interest in Molly.  Meredith and I stand there with our mouths on the floor watching all of this take place and Drew is just bobbing his head to the music.  Eddie and Molly talk and Mere and I are hysterically laughing at the series of events that just occurred when Molly grabs Meredith's hand and squeezes hard, indicating that we need to get the hell outta there.  We start buttoning up our coats and Ed walks off and we try to get out of there, but then a fun song comes on and we figured we should stay and hear it, since Ed's gone.  Bad plan.  Ed notices that we haven't left and he comes over to Molly and grabs her hand and leads her out into the foyer, says something to her, and then takes her hand and drags her upstairs and outside.  We begin hysterically laughing again and go upstairs and into the street to find out where Ed's taken her.  She manages to extract herself from the situation/we rescue her and Moll proceeds to tell us that after the slut introduces them, Eddie, who is actually from Lithuania, says "Molly!  I'm Ed!  You live in Texas?  I'm thinking of coming to New York in January.  That's not very far from Texas.  Would you like to fly up and come see me?"  The (blurry) entirety of their conversation is as follows:

Lithuanian Eddie: Do you smoke? Come stand outside with me.

Molly: No, and I think we are about to leave to meet a friend. So sorry!

[Go to gather up coats...not quickly enough]

Lithuanian Eddie: Come out here.

Molly: Uhh, ok.

Lithuanian Eddie: I am moving to New York after Christmas. How far away is Texas from New York?

Molly: Oh gosh, thousands and thousands of miles. Reallllly far.

Lithuanian Eddie: That's OK. We can visit each other. It's only a plane ride away.

Molly: [stuttering] Oh. Well. Gosh. Um. It's really far away, and it's too cold there for me.

Lithuanian Eddie: Are you on The Facebook?

Molly: No. [THANK GOD]

Lithuanian Eddie: Well, do you you have email? Give me your last name and information so we can keep up our relationship...our friendship. I will write down your email.

Molly: I don't have a pen or paper or anything. Sorry.

Lithuanian Eddie: Go get a pen from your friends.

Molly: They don't carry pens either. No one brought anything tonight.

Lithuanian Eddie: [Repeats something 4 times that she never understands regarding something else she should give him instead]

M: Uhh we're going now...BYE.

A pic of Lithuanian Eddie and Molly that I sneakily snagged.

So while Meredith may have gotten a phone number and a couple of texts from a cute Irish guy, Molly wins with the mail-order marriage proposal from the balding Lithuanian.  Hands down.

We then head to another bar and wait for Connor to finish work and then we meet him at a wine bar-turned-night club and get seated at some plush leather couches while we all frantically groom ourselves and toss our hair and adjust our clothes so he'll notice us and flirt with us and like us.  We're all nervously talking and he walks in.  AHHHH!  He greets all of us with a kiss on the cheek (HELP!) and sits down and begins charming the pants off of us, as per usual.  He and Meredith are mostly flirting and Drew is ready to go home and Molly and I are watching them flirt and analyzing everything.  We're 15 years old again and it's awesome.  Connor then asks us what we're thankful for.  We all go around and say what we're thankful for (fellowship, friends being in town, jobs, etc.) and Connor says "Well I'M thankful that you didn't elect a Republican president!" And we all smile and nod politely and clink our glasses and take a sip of our drinks.  Connor continues, "Your president effects all of us, you know."  Drew begins shifting in his seat and said, "But...really??  DOES it effect you??" I shoot Drew a look and whisper "Please, let's not get started on this," and he says "But actually..I kinda WANNA get started on this..." (our new pet peeve is Irish people telling us all about our country and our president and our politics).  Meredith can probably sense what's coming so she says something no doubt funny and witty and changes the subject entirely.  Ah.  Crisis averted.  

We end up having a lovely evening with Connor, just as we suspected, and if you want any other details, you'll have to talk to Meredith.  

I'd say a flirty meet-up and a Lithuanian stalker mean this trip has been a HUGE success!

Galway Girls

We got up early on Thursday morning, picked up our jazzy Renault at Hertz, and journeyed across the country to see the Cliffs of Moher and spend the night in Galway!  Here's our trip in pics:

The Cliffs!  Stunning!

Ooooooo.

O'Brien's Tower - built as an observation point in 1865, I think.

Best friends!

Me and my boo.

Molly's pretty.

Hookin 'em from O'Brien's Tower

Deep thought.

Instagram pic - and Drew's American flag sock compliments of Uncle Skip and Aunt Tracey!

After the Cliffs, we took a drive along the coast and stopped at Monk's for some seafood/a makeshift Thanksgiving lunch - complete with a roaring fire and pretty views.

My fish and chips.

Drew's stuffed chicken with mashed potatoes, gravy, and carrots!  Looks like Thanksgiving to me.

I dared Meredith to put an entire piece of Irish soda bread in her mouth and she DID IT.  And now I'm probably in trouble for posting this picture.  

An hour later, we were at the Park House Hotel relaxing in our 4-person suite.

Mom and Dad...

And our two kids.

Cute pub decorated for Christmas.

Molly talking to a German Ironman competitor that we saw at Monk's earlier in the day.   We got stuck talking to his awkward friend and left but I'll never forgive myself for taking Molly away from him.  Dangit.

Friday morning - Spanish Arch, which was built in 1584 as an extension of the City Wall.

Modeling.

Expressing awe at the age of the wall.

More awe.

That's old.

The River Corrib.

Cool birthday hat, huh?

Shop Street/Quay Street - the main shopping/walking streets in Galway.

Thomas Dillon Jewelers - the original and oldest makers of the traditional Claddagh ring!

Mere talking to Catherine, the cutie saleswoman.

A successful friendship and purchase was made!

Prettttttty..

Flower shop!

Fun pub we went to the night before.

Happy tourists!

The Galway Christmas Market opened that day!

Germans with mulled wine.  Gimme.

Christmas...balls?  

Turkish Delight!  Don't mind if I do.

We stopped by Salthill Beach on the way outta town.  Lovely.

A storm's movin' in.

Friends!

Meredith's pretty.

Sills.

Happy days!  Great trip!

Happy Birthday Drew!

Last Wednesday was my boo's birthday!  The big 28 - a huge day in every young man's life.  Not.  But we tried to make it as special as we could and I think he had a much better day than expected, and I think it may have had something to do with our pals being here.  He unfortunately had to work on Wednesday, but his coworkers showered him with attention and birthday cake so that helped too!  So nice.  

I'm not gonna list out 28 reasons I love my husband or anything but maybe I'll list a few just because.  He takes good care of me.  He's selfless.  He's cute.  He's funny.  He looks pretty damn good in a suit.  He gladly puts up with me and my kooky friends for 8 days and laughs along with us the whole time.  He's my best friend.  I'm the luckiest gal in the world cause he's mine forever!  So there.  The cheesiness is over now.

We had a slow start to the morning and finally made our way to Trinity College around noon.  I was looking forward to going on a tour of the college and showing the girls the Book of Kells and the Long Room, but naturally the last tour (given by a Ph.D. student at the college) was at 11:45am.  Awesome.  So I gave them my own tour with the help of Wikipedia and my own limited knowledge of the college from the one tour I'd taken of it!  Whoops.  I think they got screwed on the tour portion but they seemed to enjoy it.  Then we went to the Book of Kells and the Long Room, which is still one of my fave places in the city!  And guess what: pictures are strictly forbidden but I TOOK ONE ANYWAY!  I'm rebellious.  

Mere attacking Molly and us being emo.
PS: Meredith's glasses are fake.  I repeat, those glasses are FAKE!

Beautiful.

Two gals at Temple Bar.

We stopped by Temple Bar for a pic and ate some lunch and went to Dublin Castle and the Chester Beatty Library.  I think I've written about this museum before, but it's basically an amazing collection of artifacts from all over the world and has a huge section/collection of artifacts about all of the different religions.  Pretty impressive stuff.  Though Meredith and I were laughing too hard at our new definition of the word "bibliophile" (one who is sexually attracted to books or who touches books inappropriately) to pay the impressive museum the respect it so deserved.

Then we went home to prepare for Drew's birthday celebration!  He came home and we had this lovely spread of gifts and cards waiting for him.  Yay! 

He opened all of his gifts (he got some Guinness cufflinks from Mere, Guinness coasters from Molly, a new hat and a cool print of Ireland from me, a shirt from my parents/aunt and uncle, and a trip to Scotland in October from his parents) and some lovely cards from his loved ones that hopefully made him feel special!

He's wearing Meredith's fake glasses here - but he looks pretty good.

Now this is where the night got fun/interesting.  We headed to Bear, one of our favorite restaurants here for Drew's birthday dinner, and we happened to get one of the most charming, flirtatious waiters in all the land.  We were all smitten with him, including Drew, and all four of us were flirting with him like crazy.  And I think he liked all of us too cause he kept coming back to our table and lingering and talking to us.  Particularly to the brown head with the fake glasses on (Meredith).  A large percentage of our dinner conversation revolved around the cute waiter.  Whoops.  We told Mere and Molly to lay it on thick and make dreams come true!  At one point we asked the waiter where we should go out on Friday night, and as he was being charming and flirty, he accidently dropped one of our wine glasses he was collecting and shattered it all over the floor.  This gave Mere the opportunity to jump up and grab his arm and engage in some more witty banter with him.  SCORE!  The dinner ended and try as we might to linger with our waiter, we couldn't avoid the inevitable: we had to go home.  Me, Molly, and Drew walked on outside while Meredith was stuck inside for some reason.  She came out with a huge smile on her face and said "Well, he just got my number!  And then kissed me on the cheek." And Molly and I punched her in the face/squealed like school girls because we couldn't believe what luck she'd had.  YES!  They made tentative plans to meet up on Friday night after we got back from Galway.  YES!  We're mature.

Meanwhile, in Dallas, The Hardline was playing on The Ticket.  If you don't know what this is, this is a sports radio show that Drew listens to every day, and HAS listened to every day since the begining of time.  During a segment on The Hardline entitled "Why Today Doesn't Suck", they sometimes read emails from people requesting birthday wishes.  Molly and I decided to email Corby, our neighbor and a main guy on The Hardline, requesting a birthday shout out for Drew - fully capitalizing on the neighbor thing.  They also evidently won't read an email or a birthday wish unless you attach a picture of yourself looking presentable/hot.  This presented a problem for Molly and I because neither one of us believe that a picture of us looking hot exists anywhere in the world.  I finally sent in two pictures of us: one from my rehearsal dinner (where we're both in our prime) and one from the photo shoot at the park the day before.  So...LONG story short, Amy and Kathleen alert us during dinner that we MADE IT on The Hardline, AND that the guys on the show thought we were decent-looking!  I think they even said the word "hot" at one point.  Oh, and they wished Drew a happy birthday!  Woohoo!  We're famous!  I was so pumped, and besides the hot thing, I was excited cause it was the icing on Drew's birthday day.  I'd like to thank Peter B., Amy H., and Kathleen for helping us out.  And if you want to hear the link you can click here and go to the 7:30ish mark.  Cool!

So bottom line: Wednesday was a great day for Drew, and a great day for three incredibly insecure girls.  And the apparent overall message here is that our true identity comes from...OTHERS!  Ha.  Kidding.  Kind of.

Happy Birthday Drew!