It started as a pipe dream a few years back, and slowly became a challenge: take a week-long trip, just the two of us, to celebrate our tenth anniversary in the summer of 2015. Would the kids (and more importantly, would we) be ready for a week apart? Where would we go that was exotic enough to qualify as a real vacation, but not the other side of the world? And where we could actually relax, rather than feeling the need to see and do everything, like we usually do?

We settled on Ireland, as I’d never been there and Aimee hadn’t in years, and made our plans. The girls would stay with Aimee’s family, and we would visit Dublin, Connemara, and Galway over eight days. In the end, of course, we had a great time and the girls, after a week of enjoying their cousins’ company and a dip in the pool every day, didn’t really want to leave, so it was a great time for all concerned. We lucked out with the weather (two days of occasional rain out of eight), and hit some of the big sights (the Guinness Storehouse, the Cliffs of Moher, Inishmore in the Aran Islands) and some out-of-the-way spots as well.

The full set of photos is here.