Glenbeg

Was great fun! On saturday we took Rachael,Chris,Lee and Ethan to the beach. Ethan's first time at the beach and we bought him a bucket and spade which Rachael and i loved playing with! We also played with his football while he laughed at us from his buggy. Mj,Lee and Chris we looking for muscles and Rachael and i just chatted and laughed. We had packed a huge picnic and flask of coffee for our day out as the sea air makes you hungry! After a couple of hours at Silver Strand we moved on to Spiddal for an icecream and some more muscle picking. The weather was perfect although Rachael wore a cardigan all day,it must be a pregnancy thing! We carried on after lunch out to Claregalway via the caravan shop(more about that another time) and over to Mj's parents house. Teresa hasn't met Ethan yet and was so pleased to see him at last. After a short stop there we headed home as Ethan has tea at 4:30pm and then bath,bottle and then bed by 6:00pm. A lovely day all round.

xx

I just want to mention that it is two years to the day that i moved to Ireland and i am still just as happy as 27th April 2005. Alot has happend in the last two years and we have so much to look forward to.

xx

I have realised that with all the stuff going on with the house that i never blog about our wedding. So here goes........
Mj and i are getting married on the 1st December this year in Galway,Ireland. (where we live) We are having a catholic ceramony in a lovely church down the road. Were having 4 bridesmaids,my sister Rachael,Mj's sisters Lisa and Karen and my friend Laura. Mj is having 4 groomsmen,Best man and best friend Martin,my brother Richard and 2 friends John and Barney. My nephew will be ring bearer and we hope to put our new niece in a little dress to match my sister. We couldnt get on the pre marriage course that we wanted so were looking for a new one as we have to get that done soon. The lady who was doing our chair covers rang yesterday and told us that she has to cancel as she is pregnant and is due on our wedding day but other than those little problems we are sailing along haha! The church is booked,the hotel is booked,my mum is making my wedding dress which im sooooooo excited about and she is also making the bridesmaid dresses. We have the florist booked but have not yet picked the flowers.The cake is booked. We have Frank Naughton singing at the church and for those of you who wouldnt know who he is look him up online as he is a great classical singer. We have most of the music picked for the church and we have the band booked for the reception.
www.weightlessastronauts.net
So all we need now is.....well........about a million things and a honeymoon!
Oh and we need to get engaged somtime before we walk down the isle haha!

xx

Its been a very busy week and we did get the cheque on tuesday yay! So the diggers will be going in next friday and i will be there,camera in hand! I have not realy had time to put the laptop on this week so i have just spent the last hour reading all the posts from the last few days. Im sorry if i have not left any comments. We have been over at Rachael and Chris's alot this week and with work aswell we have only been home to sleep haha! We have copied the plans for the various stages of the build and it all seems real now.

xx

Sorry we didn't blog yesterday but its going to take me a while to get over the novelty of my sister and family being in Ireland and will be stalking them for a few days! The money arrived in our solicitor's account yesterday but he wasn't there to issue the cheque. We don't mind now that we know the money is there. So today realy is the day that we pick up our 1st stage payment cheque, 1:45pm to be exact and were soooo excited! Were going out for our celebration dinner on friday night after having the voucher since september as a present for Mj's birthday.

xx

I forgot to say that we didnt get the mortgage cheque and they are saying its monday morning now but i have given up getting excited. I have had more exciting thing to keep my mind of it this weekend. We have put the notice to build letter into the planning office and we start in two weeks so they had better give us the cheque soon!!!

xx

Rachael (my sister),Chris (hubby),Lee and Ethan (nephews) have finally arrived in Ireland to start their new life. Rachael,Dad and Bob and George(cats) arrived on friday night about 930pm after 14 hours traveling. We sat up and had a drink and then got an early night as we were all very tired. Then at 3am Mj's friend Barney arrived with his big white van. They had a coffee and messed around with Mj's new GPS thingy and at 4am they set off for Dublin to catch the 8:05am ferry to Hollyhead. After breakfast on the boat they relaxed for the rest of the crossing by going to the cinema. They docked around 12 midday and then drove four hours to my parents house in Solihull where my my was their with Dads friend Mark to welcome them with COFFEE!!! They spent over an hour loading the van with all Rachael and Chris's things and then went in for dinner and a rest. At 8:30pm (saturday night) they left my parents house for the four hour drive back to Hollyhead to catch the 2:30am boat to Dublin. They were early and boarded the boat and went and booked a room to get their head down for a few hours until 5:30am (fast boat) when they docked. Then they drove the four hours from Dublin to Galway and arrived at the new house at 9:30am to a welcome of COFFEE!!! While all this was going on i was at home with Rachael and Dad. On saturday morning we did a little shopping and went to pick up a borrowed bed for the new house and then at 11am we met Con (the estate agent) and picked up the keys. Dad was driving Mj,s van and Rachael and me in her car. Oh and this is the first time Rachael has seen the house she is going to live in as Mj and i were left with the job of house hunting as Rachael is 8 months pregnant and chris was working full time. We then drove out to the house and thank god she loved it! We emptied the car of the stuff they bought over and made a coffee. There is lots of coffee involved in this weekend as none of us slept much! After putting up Ethan's cot we set off for Mj's parents house and Dad went via Galway airport to meet the 1:00pm flight carrying Chris,Lee and baby Ethan. Rachael was so pleased to see them and had realy missed them. We grabbed the sofa and two chairs out of the shed that Mj and i have stashed for a rainy day and went to introduce Chris,Lee and Ethan to their new home. Thank god they loved it aswell!!! Ethan was not sure where he was at all (being only 11 months) especially when we put him down for a nap. After alot of cleaning and lighting a fire Dad and i went back to my apartment about 9pm (saturday night incase your lost like i am haha!) We woke bright and early this morning well not so bright after another night in my spare room with their cats. We cant take the cats to the house till they are all moved in incase they get out and we lose them. At 8:30am we headed over to the new house and at 9:30am Mj and Barney arrived with the van and thats where my two stories collide. We unloaded the van and let the boys go and get some well earned sleep after a breakfast sandwich. We unpacked what we could and set up the nursery for the new baby coming in 5/6 weeks. Dad and Chris did all the flat pack stuff while Lee did his room(Lee is 17) and Rachael and i entertained Ethan and unpacked kitchen boxes and food and just chatted. I have realy missed that. After a few tears we took Dad to Mj's parents where his sister was taking him to the airport and said our good byes. We grabbed some logs and some tulips and headed home. Lee is staying at our house tonight and its so nice to have him round. Its been a very busy weekend and im glad they are happy with their house and i hope they have a very happy life here. If its half as happy as mine is then they will be fine! Here are a few pics of the weekend.....
Lee by the fire.Ethan finding his feet.
Waiting for the van.Coffee!Yay!
The mess begins.
Lee sorting his room.Coffee!Chris.

Well im not sure if this is going to make sence but i will try to explain anyway. When our mortgage paperwork gets sent to Dublin its gets scanned into their computer and someone must have missed some and it was showing that some things had not been recieved. Well this was not the case but the Galway branch re sent the missing pieces anyway. So as it stands,now the lost things have been found,the cheque should be issued and we should have it by friday. We have lost all the excitment in what should be a very exciting time for us.
In other news its only three days till we see my sister and my dad and only four days till we see our brother-in-law and our nephew's Lee and Ethan.
We are six weeks into a boil water notice in county Galway and i never mentioned it before because we thought it was nothing to worry about but there are now 180 confirmed cases of cryptospiridium (not sure if its spelt like that haha!) They cant find the source of the out break and we will be boiling all water till september they think which is soooooooo annoying!

xx

We called up the solicitor today and they had not recieved a cheque for us so we got on the phone to the mortgage people in the head office in Dublin and they said "we are still waiting on your letters from employers and p60's." I dont even have it in me to get angry writing this post but just to tell you that they were sent in January will let you know how we are feeling right now. We are being lied to again. We were told on tuesday last week that the cheque was being issued in three days. We are not sure where to go from here and im not sure what will happen tomorrow but we have given them 24 hours to sort something out. Might just leave it at that for tonight and talk to you tomorrow.

xx

Just a few pictures of the house plans for you all to look at.
This is the front of the house.
This is the plan of the ground floor.
This is the plan of the 1st floor.
This is the back of the house.

Well it wasnt friday so it must be monday that the cheque will come and we can make plans for the build. To add insult to injury when we recieve the cheque we have to then send a letter to the planning board to inform them that we will be starting the house two weeks from the date of the letter. So we cant even do anything strait away. Mj and i have been to a home exhibition today and we found a family run company that do the exact furniture that we want. The wood they use is all Irish and its all natural shapes and colours. So were off to pay them a visit in a few weeks to work out what we want and in what wood. If you want to have a look its www.paulmoore.ie and i have no idea how to put that up as a link haha! (must talk to paddy about that!) We then drove out to Claregalway to catch up with Mj's family and pass our site and look at our empty field. Then we drove on to Clarenbridge to see Mj's uncle and aunt(Liam and Maureen)and to give them the dvd we made of Maureen's 60th birthday. They loved it and it was so funny to see Liam and Mj judging their own singing. Then on the way home we stopped at a petrol station for crisps,we are both going back on our diet on monday after deserting it over easter and Mj is giving up the crisps. This time next week my sister and family will all be in Ireland for good and im sooooo excited! Well i hope everyone else is having a good weekend.

xx

I am writing this post with a little excitment which i probly should NOT have, but after a stern phone call from our solicitors secretary to the mortgage people our leagal paperwork suddenly appeared on tuesday morning!!! They emailed down one last form for me to sign and Mj dropped that strait back into her and she said those words again....... "your first cheque will be issued in three days." So its tomorrow or monday we hope. There is no other news realy we just cant wait for the weekend.

Well today is my birthday and im now 28. This morning i felt 100 though as we had a great night out last night. Mj and i and a few friends went into town to a pub called the Quays. This pub looks like any of the other pubs in town from the outside but on the inside it is stunning. They imported the inside of an old church from Austria and put it inside this pub. The wood work is like nothing i have seen before and alot of the tables have pews to sit on. Not only is it beautiful but they have the most fantastic live music. We went to see a band called "The weightless astronauts" who we have booked to play our wedding. As usual they were fantastic! After lots of drinking and fun we left at about 3am and staggered to get some kind of food and then flagged a cab. We got home to find the lift in our appartments broken and the lift maintenance guy shouting hello on the intercom inside the lift. Some one had got stuck in the lift but obviously had some kind of panic attack and kicked their way out!!! The door was realy bent out and there was a small gap they had obviously squeezed through. The more i thought about it the funnier it got. So we climbed the 3 flights,ate the burger and woke up this morning feeling worse for wear. Had the best night!

xx

With all the goings on lately and getting excited about my sister and family moving over here i have forgotten to write a post for my brother and sister-in-law.They live out in Canada and got married last August.They have just bought a new house so congratulations to the both of you and i hope you will have many years of happiness there.

xx

Please can someone tell us! Mj rang the mortgage lady yesterday(thursday)just to see where we were at before the 4 day weekend. She said "i will check the system." *nice music on the phone* "well Mr Duggan we are waiting for all your legal papers from your solicitor." They were sent a month ago!!!!!!!!! and we spoke to her to tell her that they had been sent to Dublin by mistake and she said it was fine!!! We also spoke to her two weeks ago and she said all the paperwork was together and that the cheque will be issued in a couple of days.That was two weeks ago and she is telling us now that there is nothing in Dublin from our solicitor! They have not rang us about this and also told us everything was fine!We are seriously considering not building the house at all.How can people mess with your lives and emotions this much.To put this into perspective we were looking to be in the house by may at one point.We are four months waiting for this mortgage,four months of lies by the sounds of it and for what??? so we can pay them back three times what we borrowed??? is it worth it???

xx

Well im sorry we haven't posted for over a week but i would rather not post at all than be telling you all the same things over and over. As you can tell there is still no news on the house.
Now for all the nice news!Around 15th April Rachael and Chris (sister and hubby) are moving to Ireland to be close to us! (well i think thats the reason!!!)They bring with them our two nephews Lee and Ethan,a bump(niece on the way)and Bob and George the cats.Last thursday they moved out of their house and in to my parents house which only realy has one spare room and no cat flap! haha! The next two weeks will be lovely for my Mum and Dad having them around so much before they emmigrate.Its almost two years since i moved over here and i still get very homesick and it will be lovely having them around!
Mj and i had a very lazy weekend. We went into town on saturday and bumped into Mj's Mum so went out to Claregalway for a cuppa.I love going out there as we are building our house at the back of their house.Mj worked all saturday night as usual and i watched rubbish on tv as usual haha!On sunday i woke to glorious sunshine as it has been all week and i also managed to have coffee and toast and read my book in bed while Mj slept next to me.We decided a while later to go out to Spidall a lovely little town not far from where we live.We got an icecream and wondered down to the beach in the sun.I then asked Mj what came after Spidall? So off we went through Connamara on a realy long but lovely drive.We stopped after a while at the edge of a forrest and parked up.We jumped the gate and went for a lovely long walk down a dirt track to a lake that Mj new.We had a lovely day in all and i topped it off with a Jane Austin on tv haha! Im a big fan!
Hope everyone else had a great weekend.

xx