We left for the feis early Friday afternoon (up at 5:30am to try to finish the laundry, since it's almost impossible to do when the kitchen construction crew is here ... a concrete crew arrived at 7am to rip up a sidewalk near us, at which point one of the cats disappeared somewhere outdoors, then the kitchen crew appeared around 8, general building pandemonium while we're trying to pack and locate truant cat ... find a neighbor who is willing to be cat-scout for the weekend, continuing the search ... honestly, I almost forgot to take underwear -- it was that sort of trip) except Thalia got sick on the way there, somewhere in Godforsaken, Illinois (we ran into the ONLY place with a restroom in that entire part of the state, only to meet up with other people from our dance school using the exact same facilities -- weird coincidence) so the trip took a while since from that point on we stopped at every available rest stop just in case.
We stayed at a Holiday Inn Express at the intersection of 65 and Keystone in the south part of town. Excellent staff there! They really went out of their way to make our stay pleasant. Not many places to eat in the area, though, so we went down to 31S south of 465, which is about 10 minutes away and has every restaurant chain imaginable.
Saturday morning it was just a matter of hopping on 65 North and driving about 10-15 minutes to the Convention Center. Rick dropped us off, then went to park, while we quickly checked in, and set about the business of Getting Ready to Feis. It's really easy to see where you're allowed to dump your stuff and set up camp because they mark it all out with yellow and black tape:
and since there's gobs of room, people abide by it pretty well. There's even room to set up your own camp chairs and watch the stages from them, or you can use the chairs provided. Really a spacious area.
We got off to a great start by making the Best Poof in the History of Poofs:
and also actually managed to put the wig on straight, as a change of pace from Louisville.
Unlike Louisville, though, our scores didn't reflect our awesome poofiness or wig-straightness. Go figure. Annabeth got a 2nd in a dance she flubbed, and that was it for the day for her. Thalia danced extremely well, and got a couple of ribbons. Their teacher was watching, and commented on how well they were dancing. Obviously the judges were looking for something other than what we had.
The scores were posted quickly. I decided I was too lazy to write all the numbers down, so I just took pictures.
We also saw some of the same people we saw in Louisville.
And a brainstorm of Rick's -- we bought lunch from the vendors about a half hour before the lunch break was called, and stored it in a cooler. That meant we didn't have to stand in those long, long lines to get a sandwich at the exact same time about 1000 other people were trying to do the same thing.
Aunt Elaine showed up and stayed for a couple of hours, and had lunch with us.
Afterwards we headed north to spend the night with Mom and Dad. Then on Sunday morning we visited Rick's Mom and Stepdad. Home to discover that yes, the cat-scout had let the correct cat into the house Friday night. What a weekend.
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