Sooo adorable! They are all so much fun to follow on instagram! Actually they are the reason I signed up for an instagram account in the first place, so I could follow them.

How's twitter for Celtic Woman stuff? I don't have an account, but maybe I should if they are active on there.

To continue on with my tour experience stories, the 2nd time I saw Celtic Woman live was on the Home For Christmas tour in December 2016.  This show has some back story from the months leading up to it, which is the story of how Celtic Woman touched my heart and why I love them so much.  This is a few months after I had seen the Destiny tour. 

This was a very rough time of my life, caused by my job.  I was in a position where I was the only person handling that specific work load, which kept steadily increasing.  I had the worst supervisor I have ever had, who either couldn't or wouldn't understand that the increase in work load had made it so that it should have been two people instead of just me.  I was under constant pressure to have every single thing done.  It was much more than a single person could ever do in a work day.  Taking vacation or even getting sick was impossible.  The company kept growing, the work load kept increasing, and my stress was growing worse and worse by the day.  I was so mentally exhausted that on nights and weekends the only thing I could manage to do was collapse onto the couch.  I went a few months straight without seeing any of my friends because I couldn't handle doing anything other than laying on the couch when I wasn't working.  Depression was setting in.  The level of exhaustion was such that I didn't have the energy to search for a different job and I couldn't quit because I needed the pay check, so I was trapped.

Celtic Woman was my shining light during that horrible time.  It happened by a very fortunate accident.  My office was under construction for an expansion.  That expansion was happening very close to my work space, so the construction noise was very loud.  In an effort to drown out the noise, I started listening to music while working, which is a very common thing for many people, but it just wasn't something I had been doing.  Celtic Woman was of course my music of choice as my favorite artists.  That's when I made the amazing magical discovery that listening to Celtic Woman took my stress away.  It was incredible, almost unreal.  Each day when I turned the music on, I could actually feel myself calming down.  Celtic Woman made the job bearable.  It was them specifically too - anytime I switched my ipod to a different artist, I would find myself craving the beautiful music from my favorite ladies.  Listening to them while working felt so good it became like a drug.  My need to hear their music was so strong.  It's hard to describe.  I know for a fact that there are several days that I would have walked out and quit if I didn't have their music to soothe me.  Quitting would have put me and my husband in a very rough financial situation, so it really wasn't an option.  Celtic Woman saved me and pulled me through.  Thankfully, I no longer work in that position or under that supervisor.  I'm in a good position now.  I still listen to my favorite ladies while I'm working, but now it's only because I love the music so much, not because I need it.

A couple of things happened during this time period.  One was that Voices of Angels was released.  I don't think there's any way I could ever fully explain how much that album means to me because it came out right during the time that I desperately needed it.  I love that album so much, it's so incredibly beautiful.  The introduction to Tara - oh my goodness, I fell in love with her the moment I first heard her play on that album.  I also had never previously heard Mairead's full vocal range the way it's showcased on VoA - holy smokes chica!  Susan and Eabha, absolutely incredible.  The amazing harmonies.  Love Voices of Angels!

The other thing that happened was that the Home For Christmas tour was approaching.  The tour wasn't coming anywhere near me.  I live in the suburbs of Minneapolis and the closest they were getting was in the suburbs of Chicago, about a 7 hour drive.  I wanted to see the wonderful ladies so badly, it was actually more than a want.  It was something I needed for my own mental sanity.  I thankfully have a wonderful husband who was completely on board and we bought our tickets and planned out our weekend getaway.  In the weeks leading up to the show, work was still awful, but I was so incredibly excited for the show.  We ended up needing to drive down a day earlier than planned due to a snow storm coming in.  The snow storm made the drive about 10 hours, during which we listened to every Celtic Woman album in order, singing along the entire time.

The night of the show finally arrived and it was everything I dreamed of and more.  They somehow managed to exceed my extremely high expectations.  The music was so incredibly beautiful.  I was thrilled that they performed about half of Voices of Angels along with the Christmas music.  The orchestra was fantastic.  This was my first time seeing Tara live and she was so amazing.  Eabha's Silent Night was gorgeous.  Susan's The Christmas Song was gorgeous.  Mairead's Ave Maria & We Three Kings were both jaw-droppers.  And we were sitting up in the balcony and Anto came out right next to us playing his bagpipes.  When they sang You Raise Me Up I started crying thinking about how they were the ones raising me up.  It was an incredible, magical evening that I so desperately needed.  I loved every single moment of it.  It was perfect.

Thanks for reading my book, sorry it got so long!  The stories of my tour experiences will continue with Voices of Angels!

The first facebook live video of the Homecoming tour will be tomorrow night, Friday 3/9. It'll be the opening song of the show at 8:00, which I'm guessing is eastern time.

I love that they post these live tour videos! Last year by the time I got to the show in June, I had already seen about 1/3 of it as live videos. So cool that they do this for their fans!

Ahhhh, Destiny. What can I say, this album absolutely blew my mind the very first time I listened to it and I'm still completely in love with it. The Grammy nomination was well deserved (should've been a win) and it was so much fun following the ladies as they attended the ceremony. Very similar to Tom, Destiny was the first time I saw Celtic Woman live, it was the starting point of my following them on social media, and although I didn't get going on the forum until now, I did lurk for quite awhile and just read stuff. Destiny is what really started my Celtic Woman cwaziness

Just for fun, what are your 3 favorite songs from each Celtic Woman album? I was going to say 1, but for a few of the albums it's too hard to pick a clear favorite and too hard to even get it down to 3. So here are my top 3 from each, in no particular order. I'm not listing compilation albums, but go for it if you want to!

Celtic Woman:
     The Soft Goodbye
     Send Me a Song
     Orinoco Flow

A New Journey:
     Caledonia
     The Sky and the Dawn and the Sun
     At the Ceili

Songs from the Heart:
     Fields of Gold
     Isle of Hope, Isle of Tears
     Nil Sen La

Believe:
     Teir Abhaile Riu
     Awakening
     Songs from the Heart

Emerald:
     Dulaman
     The Voice
     The Parting Glass

Destiny:
     Westering Home
     Bean Phaidin
     Tir Na Nog

Voices of Angels:
     Mo Ghile Mear
     Time to Say Goodbye
     Across the World

Homecoming:
     For the Love of a Princess
     Sean Nos songs (being lazy and not looking up the spelling!)
     Dulaman

Ancient Land:
     Going Home
     Follow Me
     Moorlough Shore

A Christmas Celebration:
     The Christmas Song
     White Christmas
     Silent Night

Home for Christmas:
     I'll Be Home for Christmas
     Winter Wonderland
     Auld Lang Syne

I do have a #1 favorite Celtic Woman song and it is......Westering Home. Everything about it is just perfect to me and I love that I've seen it performed live 4 times!

*Edit to this part too - Going Home has overtaken Westering Home as my favorite song!
     

I would love to see CaraNua live someday too. Everything I've heard from them so far is outstanding! Their cover of A Million Dreams sent my jaw straight to the floor. I need to purchase that for my ipod still. Amazing!

I think it's great! One suggestion I have is to change the banner at the top to either include every member of the group, past and present, or to make it just the current members if it won't work to fit everybody. I have no idea how to do something like that or how much work it is, but just a thought. Thanks much for getting this new forum all set up and running!

I would love to see Lisa live! Bucket list item for sure! This August isn't going to work for me, but hopefully another time.