The Irish Washer Girl

Irishfest was fun. It was a nice day -- a little warm -- but that's only relative to THIS summer. It was held at Crown Center in KC. Crown Center even surprised the Irish Fest folks by dying all of the fountains green for the occasion -- which looked really neat.



Crown Center donated the grounds for the weekend, Boulevard donated all the beer -- and I'm sure lots of other places donated stuff.

The location and atmosphere were great. Music was streaming from various stages, and people were out in force. Cami was soaking it up -- in her element. It was a laid-back, mill-around kind of day. There were several little shopping tents -- but I wasn't in the mood to buy anything. I had beer and limeade and water and listened to the music.

Bobby bought a very nice pennywhistle which he's decided he's just going to learn how to play. He's never played an instrument before, he was just fascinated by the machining of the solid aluminum piece.

The highlight of my day I think was the fountains that spurt up out of the ground (they didn't dye these green) and all the kids playing in them. I even ran through them a couple of times to cool off.

There were kids running with wild abandon in their underwear, a couple of twins dancing with each other -- but one little girl... maybe 10 years old or a little younger caught my eye as she was totally absorbed in the experience, literally dancing in the water unselfconscious and surprisingly (and charmingly) graceful. I snapped some pictures -- I didn't get the one I wanted, but I got a couple of ok pictures out of it. The one I wanted was her kicking water up out of the puddles on the ground in the middle of her dance.

With her dark hair and red dress and bare feet and body language, she was a beautiful little girl with a feminine child's innocence that just made your heart want to sing along with her dance.



I also got the most fun shot of Nathanial, turned here to make it look like he's Spider Man.



Vicki had a migraine and couldn't enjoy a beer, but the meat pies were good and she had a strawberry scone and liked the music.

Mark and I played some songs at home and Bobby was trying to learn to read music and play in the background. He's going to learn "The Irish Washerwoman" first.

Wandered around the Park on Monday, helped Cassie catch bugs for a bit, and played a few more songs in the park before the party had to break up and travel on home.

When we got home we watched "The Butterfly Effect" with Kevin and Adrianne. It was an interesting movie. Certainly not an uplifting one.