We have one favorite activity that encompasses all age groups...DANCING!
Truly, we aren't good. You won't see any of us on TV anytime soon, but we DANCE like we mean it! We have heart, if not rhythm.
We could trace the origins of this activity in our family back to the Wife's Great-Grandparents. As country-folk it was a community activity in the winter to gather at one appointed house for an evening of dancing. The Wife's Grandma(the Amazing Farm-Wife) remembers the drive and anticipation of the evenings. They would walk into the house and the floors would have been cornstarched for a little slip. The adults would enjoy the evening dancing away and children would eventually pass out on couches then be loaded into cars for a late-night drive home. Grandma continued her love of dancing during WWII and all the dances afterward. The Wife's Mother learned and loved square dancing and polka. When the Wife and Dear Farmer married, it became almost a requirement that Dear Farmer dance. He even square danced with the Wife's Grandma and the two won family awards.
It seemed only natural that when the children were old enough we taught them the barn dance "Virginia Reel". The children also learned ballroom dancing...the old-school-Fred-and-Ginger ballroom dancing, not this new dancing that looks like an aerobic-workout. This is our dancing. We are hard-core, old-school, break-out-the-fiddle dancing.
If we get really crazy, Honorable Son #2 begins his Irish High-Step Dancing, the rest of us attempt to follow him, but it's so not pretty. That's about as crazy as we get.
O the fun we have!!! Many family nights we have spent moving the dining room tables out and spending the night twirling and laughing. The fiddles sing from our MP3 music and bluetooth speakers, the dog and cats, goats and chickens all peer in our dining room window to see the family warmed by love and woodstove having a evening laughing and talking, spinning and skipping, eventually the adults are the ones sitting and fanning themselves while the youngest pester "spin again, spin again!"
This is a reason to love the long winters, I'm gonna DANCE!
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