Crossroads Feis
This year's Crossroads Feis was a weekend of fun and excitement. Arielle and I volunteered to help out with various different jobs, so even though we weren't dancing we were able to still be apart of the fun. The feis started Friday evening, so naturally I waited until Friday morning to prepare...worst procrastinator! As I was preparing Dallen's costume, I had him get dressed to "try out" some of his new clothing. Like an idiot, I forgot that the last time he wore his pants they were on the verge of being too short. Dallen put them on, and suffice it to say the near 5 year old had definitely grown out of the 3T size pants. All the weeks of mental preparation fizzled into panic an hour before we were supposed to be at the venue for setup. Now those Moms who share the same stress of finding boys dress clothing will know, that it is very difficult to find black dress pants with belt loops anywhere. Most would say just grab the elastic band pants that come with every set of Sunday clothes, but mind you the child will be flailing around and they might fall off or worse his shirt will come un-tucked! (Enter Sarcasm!) Silly I know, but for a boy this could be like a wig falling off or not wearing your spanx on stage for a girl! Anyway, showering and changing into appropriate attire myself went out the window so we could drive 40 minutes out of the way to get a pair of slacks.
Once we got there and started the ball rolling on setup, I personally thought it went quite well. There were some things that seemed slightly disorganized, but there were many willing to step up to the task of helping so the competitions could run smoothly.
On a side note, Arielle and I chose to sing for the music side of the competition. We could have done two solos I suppose, but that's somewhat unlike us and we wanted to do something for old times' sake. We chose to sing a song named "Crinne Hill" (Crinna Hill) which was written by a distant cousin many years ago, about the small town where she lived. She wrote the poem as a lullaby to sing to her children. One of those children found the song handwritten in her desk after she had passed away. When my Mom traveled to Ireland a few years back, she was given a copy of it and that's how we attained it. I doubt more than a handful of people have ever read or heard of it, but we figured it suited the opportunity well. We spent a few days before hand writing our own harmonies and working on our rusty vocal chords. But when it came time to sing on stage at the very end of the evening, we were tired and compared to some a bit under dressed. We went out none the less and just sang, I felt like we did pretty well considering but not as well as I had hoped. In fact as they were reading off the winners for the categories, I was hiding on the floor between the auditorium chairs because I knew we hadn't won. As our name was called for first, we rushed to the front and were somewhat dumbfounded, I personally would have been fine with a second place. Neither of us knew that there was a cash prize of $120, we heard cash prize and I thought $25 was a high estimate. It was a cute unplanned moment that I won't forget. We merely wanted to just accept the opportunity to sing again publicly, and that would have been enough. Singing felt great, and with Air it was even better.
Saturday we woke up early to again go help out at the feis. We spent all morning helping out, and around 10am I noticed that things on the gym stages were running fast. I ran home to grab Dave and the boys, when we returned I had 10 minutes to get him dressed and back stage. Yeah kinda killed myself on prep time again! He looked like a stud and he was rev'd up to dance. Backstage he heard the music and was dancing all over the place, it was so funny. They got all the kids out on stage and Dallen did a fabulous job. He has been working so hard all year going to 2 classes a week, and I think he is starting to finally get it. Come February I think this little guy will be first feis'n it up! I am a bit sad that this was his last Tir Na Nog, when he started dancing he was only 3. (Enter tear)
Silly Face
