I'd tell ya that I'm going to try to give you the short version, but well, I don't know how to do a short version of much of anything, so bear with me.
My festival season has officially started.
NTIF is held every year the first full weekend of March and many of the local rennies consider it sort of a kickoff for the Faire season, because it's one of those situations where we can dress up in garb, or our kilts and be out in public without garnering much negative attention. This year marked the return of
The Rogues to the festival after a much too long absence. As a result, my favorite Canadian, his wife, and a fiddler came down and stayed with me. It was a long and busy weekend, and I feared that my sweet Leo would be stressed to the max. Then, about 6 on Friday night, Randy said, as he was leaving to go meet other friends for dinner, "I'll see you about 10 in the morning." Puzzled, I said "Oh, you're coming over to the house? Ok, that's fine" To which he responded "Oh yeah, didn't we tell you, we've got to rehearse, and we are planning to do it at your house. Is that ok?" "Umm, noo, you didn't tell me, but sure, I'm game for it."
Before I left for the airport, I did manage to visit with my friends Mary & Sakeeta at their
Estelril Enterprises booth and get more lotion and salves, as well as catching the Clandestine show (yeah those pictures aren't all edited yet), and a wee glimpse of a wee new Ameri-Scot, Max Kean, who was a whole 3 1/2 weeks old.
By the time that I got home from the airport with the Canadians, I had learned that in my media room there would be 2 sets of bagpipes, a fiddle (actually 2 different ones, but played separately by the same guy), acoustic guitar, probably bass & electric guitar. Yeah, that was going to be interesting. Since we didn't get home until almost 12:30 and the Canadians' were at 1:30 a.m. after being up since early the day before, a text was sent telling Randy not to show before noon!
Bow fell in love with Nelson's wife, and commandeered his guitar case for her morning nap. She's such a rotten thing. She learned from the master, the late, great Mr. Moro, who was absolute the King of sweet kitties, thus she believes that the only reason that guitar case came to TX was to provide her with a new and interesting bed for awhile. For DAYS after they left she kept going into the guest bedroom looking for them and wailing her head off when there weren't there!
I got a couple of shots of the rehearsal as well:
Doug's back, Lyric on chanter, Nelvis, Randy beating on the wall, and Corey on fiddle
Doug & Lyric both on chanter, and Nelson's back
Apparently years of listening to bagpipes blare through the house on the CD player/Ipod has mellowed Leo somehow, because he slept through the whole thing.
By the time we got to the festival on Saturday there wasn't much shopping time, and I didn't get many decent shots because I was at the sale table instead of sitting on the front row.
Sunday was a better photo op for me, and I got some great shots, but haven't gotten them all edited to upload, so you'll just have to wait. We got out there a little earlier, and I got to spend some time with Erin, Tony & Tom, and later with Mark and sweet baby Claire, who, OMG is almost a year old! And isn't she absolutely darling? She LOVES her Auntie Rae and the camera!
Probably wasn't my best decision, leaving the festival to take the Canadians back to D/FW, then going back to the festival for a few more hours, because I was definitely POOPED by the time I got home that night, but I had fun and made some awesome purchases that I'll eventually add photos of as well. Yeah, I suck at getting photos done in a timely manner most of the time, so sue me. Note to self, schedule a vacation day for March 7th next year to recover from NTIF.
And well, I'm tired, so you'll just have to wait for Part 2, I guess, cuz I'm too tired to keep typing and 5 a.m. comes early tomorrow.
When E&T got home this evening, they had in tow a TINYPUPPY. Yeah, she’s 8-10 weeks old, and cute as all get out. Probably a terrier mix. If anybody needs a tiny puppy, who will likely stay pretty small, email me! She’s really sweet. Well, unless you ask Mei Ling, the sharpei/lab mix who is the alpha dog and has bigger feet than tiny puppy actually is. TP does NOT like Mei Ling one bit! We need a tinypuppy like we need a hole in the head. Our menagerie is plenty thankssomuch. 
