I mean, as soon as we arrived our friend Cameron practically dragged us onto the basketball court (all Mormons know this as the dance floor:) Everyone was super helpful and friendly (and forgiving:) and the music was so...ALIVE! Pretty soon that's all we wanted to do, was dance!
I think that's what impressed me the most. (Besides the shear number of men in kilts:D) That EVERYONE would dance! And there were A LOT of people there! Old and young, male and female, (pregnant and not pregnant ;) EVERYONE!!! As well as the fact that everybody was dancing with everybody. Haha! I LOVED IT!!!
You can see a lot of our friends in the ward in this vid, starting with Brother & Sister McLaughlin:) Then the Clemen's. What cute couples! Liking the close up of Dovile and Cameron there and a sneak peak of Mairi:D
The band is called "The Jiggers" and they were PHENOMENAL! This whole ordeal actually reminded me of Square Dancing...They'd call out the moves and we'd doe-see-doe and stuff:) Interesting.
Love their accent <3
Here's a good list of all the different dances they do. Ceilidh Dance Instructions. It's actually quite a long list! I don't think they ever repeated a dance...!
"The Flying Scotman"
Yeah, I'm about 30 weeks pregnant here...
I must say I was moving and feeling pretty good:) But I will be honest the "Orcadian (or Shetland) Strip the Willow" dance almost killed me! It was just so many people and so much skipping and spinning and it was so warm and...I'm...dizzy...! I could barely walk the next day:( I felt worse than when it took me 13 hours to hike Mt. Timpanogos! But so worth it:)
Some middle aged woman nearly took Lars off his feet with her enthusiastic spinning :D
Anyway, here's the unlucky guys who's picture I took just because they were wearing kilts:) but there were so many others!
Well, of course we did the countdown to midnight. (It was right in the middle of a dance. They just stopped everything for a couple minutes to do the countdown and for everyone to wish each other a "Happy Hogmanay" or "Happy New Year" and give a kiss on the cheek:) Then they jumped back into the dance!)
Also of note, at the end of the night we got everyone on the floor into one large circle, ended up splitting and creating a second circle of people inside the first one because there were just so many people, and we all held hands and sang "Auld Lang Syne". It was very moving.
One of the traditions called "first footing" is that the first person to set foot in your home will bring a symbolic gift intended to bring luck to the householder. "Traditionally, tall dark men are preferred as the first-foot." I have no idea why???
Our first-foot was our good friend Niall who brought us a Moses Basket, setting our luck for the rest of the year:) He also took our "announcement" pics:
Some of the "Out-Takes"
So, Happy Hogmanay! I hope you find yourself a ceilidh to attend. I highly recommend them:D
Wow! That looks like a lot of FUN! Love the posts! Keep it up, Spring!
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