Blarney Castle

You guys, I'm FINALLY sitting down to blog about our Ireland trip! Only what, 4 or 5 months later?! Life hasn't been crazy at all, if you can't tell. I had gotten so many questions about our trip but hopefully I'll answer most of them in my series of posts and that everyone gets the bug to visit Ireland because it was incredible.I actually was such a slacker and didn't take very many photos on the plane! It was kind of crazy and I feel like it's kind of like birth -- when you're going through it it's awful but afterwards you tell friends, "Oh it wasn't so bad!" Sawyer was kind of sick leading up to the trip and our pediatrician told us to expect either throw up or some fun diapers and lucky for us, he gave us both on the plane! After that though it was a fairly easy flight. We were able to call ahead and reserve the bulkhead seats where they can put a little bassinet together for you which was great. Basically a box but at least it was somewhere we could set Sawyer down to sleep! I wish I could tell you he slept for like 5 hours but nope, maybe 45 minutes at the longest stretch and woke up every 15 minutes while sleeping on me BUUUUT it was fine. We did an overnight flight and I regret expecting him to sleep for at least a good portion of the flight because then I was extra bummed when he didn't.After 11.5 hours, we landed in Dublin and went to get our rental car. My mom was with us too so we got a little "bus" that can seat like 9 and that was interesting! Cars are typically pretty small in Ireland so it basically looked like we were driving a big, red delivery van but people couldn't miss us so that was a plus! Driving on the opposite side of the car + road wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be! We drove straight from the airport to Blarney where we stayed at an old Woolen Mill turned hotel which was the cutest!The hotel was literally a five minute walk from Blarney Castle. You could practically see it from our hotel window and it was amazing being so close. We toured the grounds and met up with two of Allan's sisters who happened to be in Ireland at the same time! Our six-year-old, Holden, loved Blarney castle and could not stop talking about it the whole trip.The older kids and Allan ended up going back for a second tour while we stayed back at the hotel and warmed up Sawyer. He got pretty cold while sleeping in the stroller so he was needing some extra attention and a warm bath. We actually wanted to go into Cork the second day we were there but with Sawyer having a hard time, we had to let it go. That's the thing with traveling with little kids -- your plans sometimes don't work out the way you intend them to and things sometimes have to be cut short. My biggest recommendation is to be flexible! Don't set your expectations too high or there's a bigger chance you'll be disappointed by the trip you've planned. You can read more about my tips on traveling with little ones here.Next up is beautiful Killarney so stay tuned!-LWPH