We signed our names to the log book, posted our story online, and headed home for a celebratory Slurpee which was well earned on a searing hot July day!

It's something we've been thinking about doing for a while, but never really had the guts to try to figure it out. We figured that with CSA season quickly approaching, we had better start learning. With that, we bought about 5 pounds of strawberries from Whole Foods, got some jars and lids from the hardware store, and set about cooking up some strawberry preserves.

Jars cleaned and ready.

Strawberries ready.

Pot ready.

The strawberries sat in the sugar most of the day, and then we cooked them and let them sit overnight.

The following morning, we had to heat them back up and get them in the jars.

The jars being sanitized.

Filled jars sitting in the water cooling down.

The finished product. 2 pounds of strawberries gave us 3 half-pint jars of preserves. The recipe said we should have gotten 4, but even our second batch came up short of that. Now that we've gotten practice, we're ready for the gobs of tomatoes and everything else to come this summer.

Four hours in a car (at least), thank goodness for portable DVD players!
We left a little before 6am, and Ellie slept for the first hour and a half. We only stopped for a drive-thru McD's breakfast and one bathroom break, and just over four hours later, we had arrived.

The Cycle 9 bike shop!
By now, my Twitter followers were confused. Where the heck were we? Some random building in North Carolina? Huh? Luckily, the bike shop guy knew exactly why I was there.
"Hi, I'm Brian, and I'm here to test ride the..."
"Madsen bike! Right, let me get that set up for ya."
Service with a smile, gotta love it! He unlocked the bike, pumped up the tires, and we were ready to ride.

Ellie in the bucket, and me in the saddle.
Having a giant bucket with a kid in the back of your bike takes some getting used to, but overall, it's just a bike. You just have to be sure to leave yourself plenty of room to slow down and to make wide turns. It's a much more upright ride than I'm used to, but it isn't exactly built for speed. Ellie took some pictures along the way.

The flowers were blooming down in NC. A few times, we literally drove through pollen fog! Thick stuff.

Passing the dog walker. The bike even has a little bell. "On your left!"

A view from inside the bucket, of the inside of the bucket.
We told the bike guy we'd take it. Then came the big surprise: the slightly used floor model was priced even lower than $770. Try $500! So, for driving down to North Carolina, we saved about $950 over a brand new bike shipped to us. Crazy? Like a fox!
We popped into the little coffee shop next door for a snack while they fixed up the seat belts and got the bike ready to go.

Smoothies at the coffee shop. It was just getting hot out around this time.

It took a little help from Ellie to keep the handlebars straight, but the bike just fits in the back of the van, as long as Evan's seat is taken out.

Confirmed: the bucket can hold a case of beer. (New Belgium beer is unavailable in Virginia, so of course, I had to buy myself a birthday present of four six-packs.) Throw some ice in there, instant portable party!
It took a while longer to drive back home, thanks in part to idiotic Washington traffic (which apparently extends all the way down around Fredericksburg). But, we arrived home 11 hours after we left with our new family bike.

Lisa goes for a test ride. I probably should have showed her how to shift before she took off.

A really bad blurry picture of the two kids in the bucket. We're going to have to train them on not wiggling around too much and throwing off the balance!
So there you have it. That's how I spent my birthday. Ellie and I actually had a good time driving down there together, and we got an awesome deal on the bike. (Seriously, if you live in North Carolina, go to Cycle 9, they are awesome!) We'll be sure to post many more pictures over the summer of our Madsen exploits.

(You can view all the pictures from the road trip on my Picasa web site.)

So it begins. I got to work early so that I could leave and make it home before anyone got too crazy on the roads. Turned out it wasn't too crazy, unless you were at the grocery store.

And there's the minivan once the snow really got going.

Poor Saint Francis, buried again.

Our ruler only measured between 16-20 inches, depending on the spot, which I think is less than the December snow. The difference is that this one came mostly overnight, so I had to shovel it all at once, rather than a couple of inches at a time.

That pile at the end of the driveway will be seen again. That's how big it was after clearing just the very end of the driveway, about two shovels width worth of snow. It is as tall as me now.

Eventually the snow drove us back indoors, where we made a cardboard fort.

Scenes from the backyard.

Evan tried to help out a little bit, but ended up throwing the snow on himself more than anything.

At the sledding hill. The sled paths were good, but getting back up was a slog.

One of the cul de sacs near the school had been plowed, and the neighborhood kids made good use of the gigantic mountains of snow.

Where's Brian?

Building this awesome snow fort, that's where! All that snow I piled up from shoveling the driveway was the perfect starting point for tunneling out a huge snow fort. Our whole family could fit in there, but hopefully we won't need to.

Well, that's about all I have for now. The next snowstorm should be here in about two hours. Oh the humanity!

The snow was just beginning.

Ellie, Claire (Ellie's friend) and I waited in the snow (while Evan and Lisa were in a zoo class about monkeys) for the official opening of the farewell celebration. Why?

Giant stuffed panda! Free!

Tai Shan checks out his farewell "cake" and knocks it over trying to reach the apple on top, much to the delight of the onlookers. Alas, due to the snow, the zoo closed early, and we packed the frozen kids back into the van for the traffic-choked hour and a half drive home. Goodbye, Butterstick! We'll miss you!

The striped kids, ready to open presents on Christmas Eve!

Let the carnage begin!

Evan only got a toy motorcycle on Christmas Eve, Santa brought his "real" red motorcycle for Christmas. Ellie was happier than this picture indicates to get Barbies, and also got to bring home Mom's old Barbie clothes collection.

Evan checking out the tires on his motorcycle.

Ellie putting together her Playmobil fairy garden. Oh, the tiny pieces, how I loathe thee!

Up at Greenfield Village for their holiday nights, including a quick spin in the Model T.

Who's the weirdo? The guy with the crazy mask and getup, or the guy with the kid on his shoulders?

We were very glad there were bonfires scattered around the village. It was an extremely cold night!

On the way to the hockey game, Evan clutches to his favorite presents: hockey sticks, and his "trolley truck," a VW bus.

Having fun at the hockey game. Evan got a real hockey puck, and a toy zamboni! And best of all, MSU won 10-1!

Scenes from our annual Chuck E Cheese New Year's party.

Watching the ball come down in New York.

Confirmation, via the clock on the wall in the background, that the kids did in fact stay up until midnight.

Evan enjoyed eating the jam straight with a spoon.

And Ellie had a cookie as big as her head!
It was a bit of an adjustment going from the countryside to a big city, but at least I wasn't driving any more. We had trouble figuring out the bus system, so we ended up walking and taking the tram most places.

The Spire of Dublin, with requisite dudes wearing pint glass ads for a restaurant walking in the foreground.

St. Stephen's Green, which also had a cool playground.

This is who I want to be when I grow up (minus the pipe). The old dude reading his newspaper at the pub with a pint.

Zebras? Of course, at the zoo! (and giraffes, and hippos, and lions, etc)

We learned about the Dublin of the Vikings at Dublinia.

All the modes of transportation that kept Evan's attention: double decker buses, trams, and most importantly, the street sweeper! We seriously had to buy him his own toy street sweeper after this trip.

A few other scenes from Dublin: Bewley's tea shop, MaGuire's master brewers, Leo Burdock's fish and chips, St. Patrick's Cathedral, Christchurch Cathedral.

And finally, the great pilgrimage.

I found the memorabilia section fascinating. (The rest of the tour was Disney-fied: mostly TV demonstrations, no views of "real" brewing.) The Guinness harp, various can designs, the Guinness toucan.

The kids admiring the view from the Gravity Bar at the top of the Guinness Storehouse.

The pint at the top of the Gravity Bar. Perfect.
I hope you all enjoyed the recap of our whirlwind tour of Ireland, and sorry it took so long in arriving. Now I just have to get around to those Christmas pictures. I'll have something up by summer, hopefully.

The castle, and its pool, which used to be heated.

Lisa was ready to move in to the master gardener's cottage.

Just a small fraction of the gardens at Glenveagh.
We continued on for our quick one night at the fancy Carlton Redcastle hotel (with indoor pool!), and then took the Foyle ferry over to the North.

The sea was decidedly calmer in this area.

After a quick stop at Mussenden Temple (built right on the cliff's edge, of course), it was on to the Giant's Causeway. We took the little train that ran from Bushmill's to the Causeway, and Evan had a blast, of course.

Shane, the engine. Not Thomas.

The visitor center for the Causeway is at the top of the hill, and of course they have shuttle bus to take you to the big deal. We decided to walk down instead and take in the scenery.

The Giant's Causeway is this crazy formation of volcanic basalt columns. The tops of the columns look like giant steps leading down from the cliffs, and were formed 50-60 million years ago by ancient volcanic eruptions. Crazy.

Climbing up the columns.

For some reason, I thought there would be a way down on this side. Not so much.

I had to leave Ellie at the top and lead them down one at a time. It was steep!

The next day we took a tour of the Bushmills Distillery. They didn't allow pictures inside, so this is all you get. After a side trip to a seaside playground and some ice cream, we headed out to Cushendall, a well known fairy stomping ground.

Ellie wore her fairy shirt at tea time to get in the mood.

This double rainbow was just one of seven we saw that day. Something was definitely afoot.

Near the ruins of Layd Church, Ellie discovered...

the fairies had left her a gift of special fairy dust! She was pretty excited.
We got a little lost in Glenariff Forest Park on the way back to our B&B, but eventually made it back after a long and scenic side trip. Next, it was on to our last stop, Dublin!

Here's the best view from a B&B that we had our whole trip, the beautiful Lough Eske there, complete with sheep noises drifting across from the neighbors (surprisingly little smell though).

Our cozy room.

Ardeevin Guest House, from the outside.
From Donegal, it's a short drive over to Northern Ireland and the home of Belleek Pottery and China. Amazingly enough, we managed to keep both kids from breaking anything, though there were a few close calls. After buying a bunch of china (conveniently packaged and shipped to your home direct from the factory store!), we headed down the road to Enniskillen, stronghold of the Maguires, my mother's side of the family.

Maguire Castle, which we fully expect to inherit one of these days....

The kids particularly enjoyed the Easter themed "duck hunt" the castle ran. They had to find all the ducks hidden in the displays and write down all their names while Lisa and I tried to actually learn something about the ancestors.

One of the many times we stopped for tea, this time at The Sheelin in Ballanaleck. Irish place names are so fun to say. Ballanaleck.

Back in Donegal, we visited the Franciscan Friary ruins. Plenty of "fairy gardening" going on here, much to Ellie's delight.

Killybegs is a real working fishing town up the coast of Donegal Bay.

We were on our way to see Slieve League and took some pictures along the long hike up the road.

The Giant's chair and table at the bottom.

Just show this picture to anyone who thinks Ireland just has hills of green. Slieve League is 3 times higher than the Cliffs of Moher, and truly an amazing sight.

There is no better way to immerse yourself in Ireland than to go to a hurling match. That's hurling, played on grass with a small ball and sticks, not curling, with ice and rocks. Just make sure you bring cash, they don't take credit cards.

Just like the hockey games back home, they had pee wee hurling at halftime.

PJ Flaherty's, such a friendly place. They set me up at the end of the bar with a great view of the basketball game, right next to the loudmouth from New England. Many pints consumed that night.

After some shopping and a few other detours into the countryside, we headed up to Donegal.  Along the way, we had to stop at Westport House, home of Ellie's middle namesake, Grace O'Malley, aka the Pirate Queen.

Another beautiful place.

Grace O'Malley, herself.

Westport is also home to the Pirate Adventure park, featuring a miniature train, and the "Cannonball Run" slides. Those slides were good for a solid hour of entertainment.

Donegal was a bit of a drive from there, but the scenery, including Croagh Patrick was stunning.