Sunday, June 16, 2013

Fairfield Festival in CT....

Blogs are great.

Do you want to know why I blog?

I used to scrapbook all the time. I have awesome scrapbooks of our family vacations, Haley as a baby, Haley's musical journey, and I hope someday to scrapbook for the boys. (The boys aren't completely leftout. I just didn't begin scrapbooking until a little after Haley was born. I did a great job with the boys' baby books but if I want to scrapbook, I will have to go back and do that.) Anyway, I used to have time to scrapbook but I am now about 2.5....well, actually 3 years behind.

I have time to sit at the computer for a few minutes and upload some pics to a blog but I don't have time, or the energy, to go to the basement and get out my scrapbooking stuff and make up pages...plus I haven't even printed out photos for the past two years. Ugh! So, I blog to keep everything in order and remember where all those pictures were taken when I someday print them out and catch up on those scrapbooks. I haven't given up hope yet....I do plan to do all that someday.

Haley and I woke early on Saturday morning to make the 3.5 hour trek to Fairfield, CT for their 25th Annual Irish Festival. It was a smaller scale festival but with all the trappings of the larger festivals....vendors selling food and trinkets, Gaelic football and hurling competitions, Irish dancers, musicians both local and bigger bands, and Irish sessions. The John Whelan Band...with their amazing little fiddler, Haley (and her amazing fiddling friends Genna and Kathleen), played a two hour set on the big stage in the middle of the afternoon.

Sound check.

The John Whelan Band.

John's fiddlers.

The Irish dancers....the dance floor was full of kids under 5 dancing away to the tunes.


John always introduces the band during the performance. He tells the crowd how he met Kathleen when she was 12 years old and told her someday she could play in his band then goes on to list her musical achievements. Yesterday, he told the crowd, "I met Haley when she came out of the womb and told her someday she could play in my band."

We left the festival shortly after the band finished performing...would have loved to stay and hear Eileen Ivers and Immigrant Soul scheduled to play in the evening but Haley's fiddle teacher was having a graduation party for his daughter so we headed back to NY for the evening. We knew there would be great music happening at Brian's but Haley was delighted to see Tony DeMarco and have some tunes with him. The usual session crowd was in attendance as well. Good food, good music, and good company....it was a lovely party!


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