Cheerio Parents!

Hello to all my friends and family around the world! Lots to update you on from the Keating/Whyte front. The Dub's won the All-Ireland Final, Peadar's parents and mine have met, we all lived to tell about it, we jet-skied the Irish Sea, and more.

To start you off with, check out a classy picture of my lovely boyfriend enjoying a glass of pino grigo after a hard won football match. Very manly ;)

Recently we went to a "blessing of the graves" which is an Irish Catholic tradition. Once a year the priest does a service in the graveyard by the church for all those who have passed on. It was very interesting as I had never been to anything like it. Everyone gathers around and there is a little trailer where the choir sings from and the mass is done on loudspeaker. I thought it was nice to dedicate some time to people who have died... it's comforting to know that even if you are gone you will still be remembered.

As I mentioned before, The Dubs (Dublin County Team) won the All-Ireland final, which is like the Superbowl of GAA. Below is a picture of Peadar and I getting breakfast into us before the game and a subsequent all-day session of celebrating! We got really good seats from Peadar's GAA club and were sitting in the Davin stand, which is like the endzone if you were comparing it to American football.

This past weekend my parents came into town, and we also had the wedding of Louise Whyte and Darragh Mannion. So the wedding ended up being where my parents and Peadar's parents met each other. Louise was kind enough to invite my parents to the "afters". Irish weddings are very different from American ones, they are a flat out party and the dancing and drinking continues until at least 6 in the morning usually. They are divided into two parts, 1) the wedding ceremony, drinks reception, and dinner and 2) the subsequent party of drinking and dancing, also called "the afters". You could theoretically be invited to a full wedding, or just the "afters". Since most weddings are well over 200 people here, it's a way to include people in the fun without having so shell out loads more money. 

 Since I am super pale these days (shouts out to Irish weather), I went for a spray tan the day before the wedding, and I didn't know you weren't supposed to shave your legs or put lotion on before you do that. So my tan ended up being reallly streaky... see picture below. 

It was a total nightmare, especially because ever since I moved here, I have been very aware of the fake tanning industry going on in this country (it's a basic requirement for women because there is very little UV action happening on this island) and am sometimes critical of others tan job. For example, when girls feet are overly tanned and orange and they look like they have a disease. Or the other day I saw a girl wearing shorts and she had very tan legs but pale arms. What the hell? There should be legislation regulating the fake tanning in this country. In Ireland, for a proper tan you either do it yourself (self-tan), or go to the salon where you have to get semi-naked and have some young one (judge you) and spray you down with an airbrush. There are no self-service booths like in the USA. Anyway, I came home freaking out, ready to actually not go to the wedding. But luckily Peadar worked some magic with a self-tanning mitt and evened things out. It looked fine the morning on the wedding. You can now add beautician to his long list of skills and talents: farmer, footballer, musician, beautician. Quadruple threat.

The bride Louise looked beautiful, in Ireland most of the brides I've seen have long traditional veils down the back to the floor and they don't wear them over their faces. The church was lovely, and all the guests had colorful outfits and swanky hair pieces.

 < Bridesmaids, not like the movie. More classy.

Later on in the night, about 3 AM, I was convinced Peadar needed to wear my headpiece and was harassing him for ages telling him he looked gorgeous. Doesn't he?

A pic of the parents, Peadar and I, also at 3 AM! Looking good, don't you think? ;) Anyway, so Kev and Suz meet Eddie and Mary and I think things went really well, considering the late hour and the cultural differences. It was surreal seeing everyone in the same place! Suz wanted to meet "as many Whytes as possible" and she was in the right place for that. I think she met about 150/230 people that was at that wedding, and quite literally almost the whole extended family - which is quite an accomplishment. And she will remember everyone's names too! Better than me anyway....

The castle we were at was Lough Rynn  and is a sister castle to Killronan, where Peadar's sister got married in March. This castle had the most amazing grounds and we took a little nature walk after the wedding and I felt like I was in the Secret Garden. Love that movie, btw.

Lastly, on Sunday, Peadar, Kevin and I went Jet-Skiing in the Irish Sea. It's hard to see in the picture below, but it was a cloudy and rainy day in Howth Harbour and I rented some 215 horsepower, huge, brand new jet skis from some semi-sketchy eastern Europeans. You can see the boat launch in the picture below.

Basically, these two guys were like, have you ever driven a jet-ski before? We were like yes... they said "Sign on dotted line so we not responsible if you die" and off we went! Now I have open-ocean jet-skied before in Maui, Hawaii, and there were some pretty big waves, but it was highly regulated and you generally had to drive around buoys in a big circle. Well this was completely unregulated! They basically said stay away from other boats, you can go all the way around Ireland's Eye, which is a big rock island, and have as much fun as you possibly can. Well we sure did! We were fighting the most massive waves ever and barely staying on our jet skis. I thought I was driving crazy then when we switched and Peadar started driving and I was on the back of ours, I was scared sh*tless! He almost threw us off in a major way! Good thing Mom was safe on dry land, having a glass of wine and reading her book at one of the restaurants. She would have died if she saw what we were up to. My friend Rachel Taggart would have absolutely loved this. It was pure adrenaline for a full hour. Kevin even managed to not listen to the easy-going guidelines, went to close to shore and beached himself, but he was lucky Peadar and another guy helped him push the jet ski back into the water. We wore wet-suits and weren't too cold, but next time we are taking a tube out behind the jet-ski, which is meant to be freaking freezing but a lot of fun. Not sure I would want to fall off the tube in the waves we were in though, it would be tough enough not to get swept away and get back on it! Serious adventure in Ireland....

More for you next week, I've got loads more pictures too!

XOXO

Keating