The Happier side of our weekend......

The fire of Saturday night kinda out shone the other adventures that hubby and I had that day. On Saturday morning we decided that we were going to head up Island to go watch the Highland games. It was a glorious day the sun was shining and nice breeze was in the air, a perfect day to go watch the games. This is something I have wanted to do for a very long time. I have always watched in amazement how they toss these stones, anvils and of course the Caber.

When we arrived there was activity all around us.....pipers on one side of the park, drummers on the other....highland dancers in the middle and off to what is normally the ball diamond was where the heavy sports were taking place.

They had two sports going on at the same time...one was the kettle toss...it's kinda of like high jump....but they attempt to toss this kettle which weights 4 stones(56 lbs) over their heads and backwards, attempting to have this object clear the bar...oh and did I mention they do this wearing kilts.....

There certainly is a technique in tossing this thing....do you see the bald guy in the red t-shirt...he won the competition, he tossed the kettle 14 feet!!!

Then there was the hammer toss...again another interesting sport...it reminded me of the modern day hammer toss but they wear the specially designed metal toed shoes that have spikes in them in order to keep them connected to the ground...if they didn't they would possibly go flying with the hammer.....this hammer weights 16lbs(which is just a little over a stone) and the winner of this competition tossed the hammer 35 meters.

The next sport we watch was the Stone toss...in this competition the competitors picked their own stones from the river....some games use a Braemar stone which is a heavier stone and it has to be put from standing position no run...the stones in this competition weighted 16-22 lbs for men and 8 -12lbs for the women...and yes there were some women competing in these events.

The last sport we watched was another weight toss...this one the weight was attached to a chain

Getting ready......

spinning before the release......

and finally the release......

Well the day wouldn't have been complete with out observing some highland dancing.....these little tykes were just so adorable......

I wanted to stay longer but my back and shoulders started to hurt....we hadn't brought our chairs and forgot the blanket in the truck....so we decided that we would go pick something up at the grocery store and go for a picnic.....we found a spot on the beach on our way home.....it was just glorious to be by the water.....but turns out we weren't the only ones who enjoys being by the water.....

He decides to take flight as do we as we make our way home....it was a lovely long weekend.....