Payson Scottish Festival

This weekend we traveled down to Provo to stay with some good friends of ours and go to the Payson Scottish Festival.  A month or two ago, I was looking up local Highland Games and I sadly realized we had missed the big Highland Games held in Lehi. However, I kept looking and found the festival in Payson, which is twenty minutes south of Provo. The huge benefit of this one is that it is free! Every other Highland Games I have been to or found online always cost about $10-15 to get in, so it was awesome to find a free one!

Elanor and I in front of the Scott Clan's crest (every clan had a booth). Oh, and the adorable kilt she is wearing was mine when I was a wee lass (Tyler wanted me to say "wee lass")!

If you don't know or have never been to a Highland Games it is basically a lot of Scottish (and also Irish and Welsh) people who get together and celebrate their heritage. I am Scottish on both sides (plus my maiden name is Scott) and I simply love Scotland. I would live there if ever given the chance. I have been there once and would love to go back. My heart yearns for Scotland--I know that is cheesy and all that but I feel a connection to it, which I get from my mom since she loves Scotland.

How could I not love a place that looks like this? My dad took this picture, by the way.

FYI---I almost always have a page break  in my posts so make sure to push the "Keep Reading!" button to read the rest of this blog post. I do this so my blog looks neater and you can scroll through all the posts quickly and choose which ones to read. It does have some cons to it since many people don't know there is more to the post. So sorry for anyone who had been confused!

This festival was really fun and we will definitely go back next year.  They had all the athletic events, highland dancing competitions, a stage with various performers, pipe band competitions, and plenty of food and celtic wares booths.

In the morning, we watched the highland dancing competitions, some athletic events such as the sheaf toss, and walked around.

Elanor in the highland dancing tent

It was so nice that the weather was cool, it even rained some! It had been in the hundreds all week!

Elanor dancing/clapping for the dancers

Elanor with Malachi watching a pipe band.

Elanor in the new(ish) little umbrella stroller we got at Kid to Kid.

These next two videos are pretty funny! Elanor loved dancing to the pipe music and a lot of people loved watching her.

After this, Elanor ran out onto the empty field where the pipe bands were playing and everyone clapped for her, which she throughly enjoyed. Tyler had to run out and get her though, otherwise she would probably have stayed out there in front of everybody all day. It was pretty cute and I wish I caught it on camera, but we were getting ready to go somewhere else and I had shut off the camera and  Elanor took us by surprise by running out there!

We had such a fun time and we are so glad we were able to go!