The Blog Formerly Known as An Orange County Sitcom

This is what we did for St Patty's Day

(random golfer dude in the picture)

Lord of the Dance Christmas Spectacular

Thing 1's dance teacher allows the dancers to do their own choreography every year for a Christmas party.  Thing 1's group came up with this:  (it's 5 minutes, but hey, what else do you have to do?) Thing 1 is in the lightest blue jeans (and the red tutu, later).

Just a minor setback

Thing 1 competed at the Western Region Irish dance championships yesterday.  She danced like an angel.  Somehow the judges didn't notice that, and Thing 1 didn't place.  This was the qualifying round for nationals and worlds - so at least we saved on airfare to Belfast and Nashville in '08. :)

It was hard for me to write this, but as I told Thing 1, you have to be willing to share your disappointments as well as your triumphs with your fan base.  So, Fan Base, here it is.  Writing about it isn't too hard - but the phone calls were particularly painful. 

Me:  "Do you want to call Dad, or do you want me to?"
Thing 1: "You do it."

a little later:
Me:  "Umm, we also have to call Grandma and let her know how you did."
Thing 1: gave me a hard stare.
Me:   "And...well...I also promised Mrs. B we'd call her...and, umm, Mrs. K, and....."
Thing 1: more hard stares
Me, realizing the hopelessness of the request:  "Never mind."

Can you pronounce this word?

Oireachtas.

Thing 1 and I are on our way to the Irish dance Western Region Championships.  That's the English translation for Oireachtas, which is Gaelic.  It's pronounced "Ore-och-tis."  I haven't really figured out how to pronounce Gaelic words except that you have to ignore at least half of the vowels and some of the consonants as well.

OK, now try to say this one:

Ioan Gruffudd. 

It's pronounced Yo-an Griffith.  But that just seems silly, so I will continue to call him E-own Gruff-udd.

Anyway...wish Thing 1 luck!

nice trophy for Third place

For Wordless Wednesday.

You still know what I did last weekend

The reason we chose last week to visit our friends in Boise is that there happened to be a feis for Thing 1 to dance in.  How did she do?  Well, let's just say there wasn't room in our suitcases for a trophy anyway.

But our friends were inspired by the pretty dancing, and when we got back to the house they asked Thing 1 for a lesson.  She was a natural born teacher. 

Thing 1 is showing Twin 2 some levitation skills:

(notice the cute shamrock bobby pin that Thing 1 had beaded during one of our afternoon craft sessions)

Jen learns the Leap-two-three:

And even Mel got in on the action:

I couldn't participate in the lessons, of course, because somebody had to take the pictures.

Your Irish Dancer Wears Combat Boots

This is really cool; click on the link WebGuy videos and scroll down to the 7/16/07 video called Your Irish Dancer Wears Combat Boots.  Thing 1 says this would be really hard to do in combat boots because "they don't bend."   There aren't any notes on the video...but I'm assuming the star of the video is an Air Force officer.  How cool.

Take a bow, ladies

Thing 1 had an Irish dance competition yesterday.  It was another lovely outdoor feis - the weather was a balmy, breezy 75 degrees.  Thing 1 was ready for some dancing action in her brand-spankin'-new dress:

Here she is practicing her levitation skills:

And this picture is just to show you the back of the dress:

One of our friends called it the "Swan Lake" dress; can you tell why?

This next photo is self-explanatory, but just to be clear...Thing 1 received a trophy!  She actually placed 1st in the hornpipe dance...but didn't place in either of the other two dances.  So her overall place was 5th.  She was thrilled:

Take a bow, ladies...

One of the funnest parts of feising is getting to see your friends dance.  (one of the funnest parts of blogging is using two words in a sentence - funnest and feising - that aren't actually words).  Here's Thing 1 with her very first Irish dance teacher from 2002:

Way to go, Peeps.

Fun at the Irish Fair

Thing 1 danced at the Feis at the Fair today in Orange County.  Here are some photos:

Doesn't she look beautiful and confident?

For the love of the dance

I haven't had the time/inclination to write my own posts lately, so I thought I'd at least post a link to another thought provoking blog.   Since Thing 1 is a champion level Irish dancer, I found this post by a Jesuit priest interesting.  What he has to say about the state of Irish dance competitions probably applies equally well to competitive sports, music, etc.