Annie's Irish Dancing

Most of you know by now about Annie's latest obsession: Irish Step Dancing. She goes to Tir Conaill Academy of Irish Dance and her main teachers are Christopher McGrory and Michael Patrick Gallagher.
Here she is in her ghillies (soft shoes) and "school jumper." This is the costume the girls wear to compete in a feis (an Irish Step Dance competition). When they reach a certain level in competition, the girls can get their own unique solo dress, which is a very flashy, very expensive dress.

Here's the back of the jumper. They all wear capes. I have no idea why.


Here Annie is in her hard shoes which are a lot like tap shoes, although the "taps" are made of fiber glass.

Annie recently competed in her first feis, which is considered a rite of passage in the Irish dance world. Everyone has to be very quiet and respectful when the first feis students are performing. The rest of the time, the audience is loud and raucous because it mostly consists of other contestants getting ready to perform their own dances and their families. There are usually dancers in various stages of undress in the audience as well as families eating lunches and talking on cell phones.



This is a video of Annie's First Feis Beginner Reel


And this is her light jig.

I realize that those videos are not particularly good, so we dressed Annie up in her finery today and took videos of her doing all of her dances.



I think Jay and I need to work a little on our technique, but you get the idea. The hard shoe dancing needs to happen in the garage, so the lighting is a bit dicey for that.

Another tradition is that the girls must curl their hair before a feis. Most girls wear curly wigs now, but, as always, Annie and I decided to go the more traditional route and curl her hair ourselves.

I put her hair in a high ponytail and then use these soft curlers invented by the mom of an Irish dancer.

I think I used over 40 for Annie. Putting the curlers in her ponytail only allows her to sleep well. It takes a long time for the curls to dry (I use a special curling spray on Annie's dry hair), so it needs to be done pretty early the day before the feis in order for her hair to be ready on feis day.

But here are the results. It looks SO much better than a wig.

I use a ton of hairspray (organic, non-toxic, of course), so her hair is a little crunchy.

I think she looks very Irish, though!

Suzuki Book 2 Recital

In the Suzuki method of piano instruction, when a student finished a complete volume of music, he or she has a "book recital," meaning the student plays all of the songs from a particular book from memory. Jay has just recently finished the Suzuki book 2 and he had his recital last Thursday. Here it is!



As you can see, three of Jay's best friends were on hand for the recital. Another great friend was sitting with Annie directly behind him. Our wonderful neighbor, Pat, also walked across the street to listen.



O.K., so here's where the freshly charged battery ran out. I was not pleased. So I got Jay to play the last three songs for me this morning. Tim is much better than I am at setting up the video camera, so please forgive the odd lighting on this part!



On to Book 3!

Hike the Grand Canyon

Every year we're here, we take advantage of the close proximity to the Grand Canyon and take a day trip for a hike.

This is the first picture I took after we got there at around 8:30 a.m.

The vision for this post and the actuality of it are quite different. I now know why people spend thousands of dollars for a steadycam. If the following videos cause you to have motion sickness, turn them off, take a Dramamine, and try again later.











The reward was, of course, lunch at El Tovar!

Best Hike Ever

We decided to return to try to finish the hike we started last week.

The weather was much sunnier and hotter than last week, so we thought we might just get it all in.

The clouds started gathering, but we continued to hike.

We even got a bit hot and sweaty during this first part of the walk.

We walked down into Sandy's Canyon looking for a cave listed in our guide book.

We took the trail to the east, and this is the sight that greeted us. It's hard to even notice the little cave with that beautiful rock formation looming over us.

We wished we could have sat out the rain storm here last week. But it really was more of an overhang than a cave, so we continued along the trail.

The photos don't do these rock formations justice. They are really spectacular.

And here's another one.

We abruptly came to a change in terrain. We entered Walnut Canyon, which is lusher and much more humid.

We came upon another cave.

And this one really was a cave. I couldn't get a good photo of it, but there was even a sign inside the cave prohibiting camping there. All along this hike, it was threatening to rain. Tim looked on his phone and it was raining heavily in Flagstaff and south, where our rented house is. But it never more than sprinkled a bit on us.

It had even rained pretty heavily at the parking lot. But, as you can see, we didn't even have to break out our emergency rain ponchos. They're still neatly folded in their little zip-locked bags.

It really was a great hike. My GPS watch put the hike at 6.6 miles, so we were all a bit tired and ready to go home for a late lunch. This is definitely a hike we'll do again -- and take guests with us.

Friday Night in Flagstaff

So, last night was very fun. Every Friday night, there's live entertainment followed by a kids' movie at Heritage Square in downtown Flagstaff. After a delicious meal at San Felipe's, we got to hear some Scottish music and some Irish dancing. Annie had a great time doing Irish step dancing to the Scottish music. Guess who forgot her camera? That's right -- I did. So Tim took the video with his phone. He took it sideways. I don't know how to turn it, so you'll just have to lean to the left and watch!

Michael's morning walk

Michael went for a hike yesterday, all by himself. And this is what he saw . . .

Visitors

One of the nice things about Flagstaff is that it's close enough to Phoenix to get visitors from home. Yesterday my dear friend, Kym, came to visit us with her 3 1/2 year-old son, Johnny. My kids had a blast playing hide-and-seek and some sort of monster chasing game with Johnny.


After lunch, we convinced Kym and Johnny to take a short hike with us.


Johnny did a great job hiking down to the cliffs with very little carrying. He also picked a beautiful flower.


Kym is a professional photographer and feels more comfortable behind the camera than in front of it. But I managed to get this photo of her!

Johnny was very tired after this hike, so we let him rest a while until dinner time. Then we went out to dinner and watched "Shrek 2" with popcorn and cookies before bed. The visit was very fun but much too short -- they headed home very early this morning. We're looking forward to having more visitors next week.