Wednesday, March 19, 2014

St. Patrick's Day Weekend

When everyone gets to be a little bit Irish.

And Irish Dancers get to dance themselves crazy.

This past weekend started with a show up in Ft. Collins for the band Celtica.  It was pretty awesome.  Seriously!

Backstage!
opening number of Amazing Grace
amazing piper skills!
Bennett Dancers!

Saturday morning, I opted out of doing the St. Patrick's Day Parade.  I was glad in retrospect, since it was cold and windy and overcast!  Brrrr!!

Our team for the day consisted of 5 dancers, my mom (our roadie) and an out of town friend (Hi Bree!).  We danced... 6 different shows.  They ranged from 15 to 30 minutes.  It was a lot of running around!!! We dealt with wind, snow, rain and sunshine. Good thing we all had matching coats with our dance outfits!



matching! poor Julie (on the right) was FREEZING

getting ready!




On Sunday, the "bar" teams only had 2 shows.  We combined a couple of teams together to get 6 dancers. Our first show was interesting... one of our dancers almost got bit by a dog! Luckily she was alright, and the drunks watching the shows mostly managed to stay off our stage. The second show of the day was short and sweet and SUPER tight. Unfortunately, I didn't get many pictures of either show.
awesome team!!

Monday... the ACTUAL holiday.  I carpooled with the awesome Courtnay and her kick-ass daughter Hannah.  We started at 10am.... and did 8 shows with the last one ending after 7:30. What a long day!!! But it was nice out, people were excited to see us dance, and we all had fun. Our team on Monday was a little different than Saturday and Sunday... but we were a good, fun group! I love my dance family.
Monday team!
my favorite redhead!
phone hack by H&J... love these girls!

Friday, March 7, 2014

1st St. Paddy's show!

Last night was the official first show of the St. Pat's season.  A small group of us kicked off a cultural event for Denver.  It was pretty awesome!

We have A LOT more shows coming up over the next week or so... so check back for more pictures, updates, etc!

Tis the Irish Dance season!

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

St. Patrick's Day countdown

12 days and counting...

and boy, am I counting! The life of an Irish Dancer is very much a whirlwind this time of year. Awesome Courtnay has been booking bar gigs since October for us... and now that time is upon us! The first official show is this weekend... so, in order to get some extra practice under our belts, we had a girls night meets dance practice night.

And it was awesome!
 

 



This will now be a regular Tuesday night thing... even after St. Pat's is over. :)

Monday, March 3, 2014

Random Thoughts


The last month or so has been relatively quiet, except for Stacey moving in with us! My mom and I hitting up a bridal expo (yes, I know) and Jay purchasing his suit for the wedding. It probably seems like those are all big things, but really... spread out over a month makes them less huge! Or at least in my mind...

Stacey, Julie and I had a great little girls night at a paint-your-own pottery place called Ceramics in the City.  It was laid-back, fun, easy way for us to sit around gabbing and doing something fun and creative.

Stacey moved in that same weekend. She's heading to Australia (sad pandas!) permanently in June.  Since her tiny studio was raising rent, she's bunking with Jay and I and the cats until she heads to OH before moving to the merry, 'ol land of Oz. I will miss her desperately, but I am going to enjoy having her crash with us until the moment she leaves.  Gus, Willow and Lucy already love having another person to bug for petting and snuggles!

My mom and I headed to a bridal expo last weekend... it was interesting. I think we had more fun in the photo booth and eating the samples than anything else. I realized that despite a few of the event/wedding planners making me feel like I have not gotten enough planned... I am really ahead of the game! My hope (and secret goal) is to have everything planned and done by June. So we shall see!!
 


The last piece of random news is that Jay got his suit for the wedding!!  Early, I know (have you noticed the pattern?) But... Men's Warehouse was having a big 50% off sale this weekend, so we figured we could at least check them out. I am glad we did, because it was totally worth it. And... Jay looks good in a suit! Wooo-eee! I admit, I was drooling a bit as he was trying stuff on.

 


February Hike = MUD!

The weather has not been too cooperative for us girls to get in our weekend hikes... but we have gone one more time.  Anne and I headed up towards Golden for a new (to us) hike.  It was fun, but very, incredibly muddy!! The hazards of warm weather winters I suppose. Anyway... here are some pics from the hike!