The St Patrick’s Day Festival

There was a parade and day-long festival to celebrate St. Patrick's Day today.

It's a beautiful, but very chilly windy day.

Look at the spring blossoms!

So pretty!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

St. Patrick's Day Parade

What's for breakfast before the St. Patrick's Day Parade?

It's the Blarney Scone!

We had lunch at The Brown Bag Seafood Company.

Lex had fish and chips.

I just ate potatoes.

It's our old Irish Dance School.

Star Wars! Back to the Future!

Cooks & Soldiers & Riverdance

Kevin and I went out on a date tonight.

First, we had dinner at Cooks & Soldiers. It's a Spanish tapas restaurant.

We had Patatas Bravas (little fried potatoes), Mountain Bread (a rustic bread), Alcachofas (artichokes), Chistorra Envuelta (sausages wrapped in puff pastry), Piquillo Relleno (stuffed peppers), Cordero (lamb), and Berenjenas (eggplant). 

Then, we went to the Fox Theater to see Riverdance!

Happy Date Night!

Story Map of Ireland Puzzle

After dinner (bangers and mash with a side of cabbage) on St. Patrick's Day, I sat down to watch Riverdance on TV and work on my new puzzle.

Irish Dance Christmas Party

Last night we went to the dance studio for a Christmas party.

Each of the dancers were given a special award.

Lex:  Most likely to ask "is the party over yet?"

Connor:  Most improved on over 2 3's.

Related:  About a month ago, Lex asked for a watch.  He said he needed it for Irish Dance, because no one would ever tell him what time it was during classes and lessons.  I bought him a watch.  Now, I discover that no one would tell him the time, because he was always asking if class was over yet.  Funny.

Feis ATL

Connor and Lex participated in their first Feis today!

They both danced three different dances: reel, light jig, and single jig.

I'm only half sure that I labeled these dances correctly.

Connor received two silver medals and one gold medal.

Lex received one silver medal.

They really didn't care about the medals at all, and they refused to participate in the taking of a medal photo in a reasonable manner.  I tried to convince them, but no.

Still, no.

Nope.

And Connor has already jumped ship from the podium.

I'm super proud of them both!

In which I make plans for another year of school

Dublin Irish Festival

I'm so glad that the Dublin Irish Festival was going on while we were in town.  We took the kids over for a little bit to walk around.  We weren't there long enough to see even half of everything, I'm sure.  It's a huge deal, this Dublin Irish Festival.

Connor and Kris and I took a ride on a bicycle rickshaw from the car to the front gate.

There was Irish Dancing and Irish Wolfhounds.

Making weapons looks like a lot of work.

Irish Shining Stars Dance Camp

The boys spent this week at our favorite Irish Dance Studio and I was super pleased to see them dancing when I went to pick them up.

They were also learning how to count from 1 to 10 in Gaelic.  I loved it!

We brought the dogs with us to Lex's Irish dance lesson this afternoon, and they waited in the car with Connor while Lex was busy.  They love being in the car with us.

I mean. Look at that face. This is a happy pupper.

Eventually, they both settled in and took a car nap:

The center console is perfectly sized to be a bed for Poppy.  Tik claimed the back seat.

THE END

Peach State Feis

Yesterday I took Lex to see a little bit of the competition at the Peach State Feis.  Since Lex just started his Irish dancing lessons, he wasn't ready to compete yet, and his teacher thought it would be really good for him to see a competition before participating in one.

Fortunately, the feis was really close to our house.  I guess there are about three big Irish dance competition events around the Atlanta area every year.  The next one will be in November.  Maybe Lex will be ready to participate in that one, if he wants to.

Lex wanted to take a couple of videos of the dancers:

New Books

It's the part of the school year where we have starting coming to the end of all of our books, but it isn't the end of the school year yet.  It's really the best part, because we are finished with all the common core subject material, and we can start to explore all the awesome things that we feel like doing.

Like Botany.  This is the third book in this series, and we really enjoyed the first two about Zoology and Anatomy.

We have also finished Spanish 1 again.  So, Connor asked if he could learn German.

In related news, the boys have also started new extra-curricular activities.  Lex has started to learn Irish dance, and he has now gone to two lessons at two different schools.  We have picked the school that we are going to patronize, so stay tuned for that.  Connor has signed back up for more tennis lessons, and he starts that soon.