Well to say that last weekend was a big one is an understatement! As you may know it was St. Patrick’s Day on Saturday, to celebrate this Monday was a bank holiday, so a long weekend for all.We started the festivities on Friday night in Tullow at Dalton’s with Karen, Siobhan, Denise and the rest of her family. Denise’s cousin was playing guitar there and singing Irish Rebel songs (I think that they start all sounding the same, but I’m not the expert, however he was very good). I went home (4 doors up the hill) at about 12.30, Eamon at 1.30 (a bit gray coloured) and the girls stayed at the pub for a lock in until 3.30am. Saturday afternoon was the St. Patrick’s Parade (in Dublin it is like Moomba (?), in Tullow & Ballon it is a small town affair). Everyone decorates their tractors, quad bikes, trucks, vans, trailers……. and drive up the center of town, very funny, my favorite was the town bike (check the photos) we didn’t ring the number to find out if it was his number! He drove that bike to both parades, we saw him traveling between Tullow and Ballon (about a 10min drive in a car at 100km/h, he would have taken much longer, he was blue!). John was pulling one of the floats with his van; his grandfather and uncle were also in the parade.After the Ballon parade we went to the pub there for an hour or so, then came back to Tullow, had dinner and a nap before meeting Danny, John & Ann-Marie at Fitzpatrick’s (2 doors down) at about 9pm. By then the pubs were almost empty, the town had already had too much Craic and gone home to bed!There was snow predicted for Sunday, we were heading up to the Wicklow Mountain’s (like Mt. Dandenong) Eamon, Siobhan, Emily & another friend were planning a 2 hour hike around the great lake at Glendalough, I thought they were crazy given the weather predicted, after having a cold for about a month I wasn’t going to get it back. As I dropped them at the car park it was snowing, they waited for a break in the weather and were off. It took them 3 hours to do the walk, there were heavy snow falls, thick fog and strong winds, I was getting concerned (as was Eamon), however they returned alive and freezing cold. Eamon made a few documentary entries on the camera which are worth seeing sometime.We stayed the night in a really traditional Irish pub, mainly locals, there were to musicians playing and even a lady from the crowd joined in (good Craic, even though we were all tired). The place was called Glenmalure.The trip back was fairly scary, as the roads had a decent amount of snow on them.I’m glad it snowed, as I don’t get to see it very often, it was actually out of season as it is well into spring here.We hope that everyone is well and enjoy the new photos; there are a few new ones of Castledermot and a couple of Eamon’s work. He started a new job, he is much happier, he is working for a timber framing company in Tullow, he goes to the new houses at slab stage and measures the slab for the size of the frame (Frames are pre-made here so have to be fairly accurate), he has a small truck to drive and a couple of Polish guys to help him if the frames later need any adjustments.I have been getting a lot of Substitute work, I have been working at the Tullow Community School which is the Secondary school, I am pleased to be back in with the older students, however I still get work in the Primary schools. Secondary is about 220euro a day (40 an hour) compared to 115 at the primary. On Friday I have 5 periods of wood work and construction studies so that will be different!Until next time keep well.