Surviving dance recitals

Our weekend was mostly filled with dance.

Here's a tip: When you are signing your child up for multiple dance classes *ASK* if those classes will be performing at the same recital. When you discover many months down the road that your Monday class and your Thursday class have different dress rehearsal times and different recital times, you will be rather...put out.

But it's just one weekend out of the entire year so you really can suck it up and deal with it. With a smile.

It all started Friday afternoon when I slicked L's hair into a bun, packed a large bag with costumes, cameras, and hair repair equipment and we headed over to the auditorium for our first dress rehearsal. Have I mentioned here how much I love, love, love L's dance studio? We used this studio for her first year of dance, then moved and had to switch studios, only to be frustrated by all the ways they fell short. This year we discovered that the studio we loved was opening a second location closer to our new home, so we switched back. It's been wonderful.

At the dress rehearsal, L got dressed in costume and I took her to the sign-in table where they escorted her off backstage to be entertained by games and coloring sheets and I went and sat in the auditorium to simply watch with camera in hand. Eventually, L's class came out and danced their little jazz routine and I snapped furiously away with my camera. But stage lights and fast motion do not help my meager photography skills and I got one semi-good picture.

Aren't they cute?

The next morning, we came back for dress rehearsal #2. Again, they took the girl backstage and I watched. This time I got...one semi-good picture of her acro routine.

We had a couple of hours between dress rehearsal #2 and recital #1, so we went over to a nearby green space and took pictures of her in her costumes. Now some of these turned out really well. It was a bit cloudy so the colors came out beautifully, there was no squinting or shadows to worry about, and she stayed relatively cooperative.

Lunch at Chick-Fil-A, then back to an afternoon of two recitals. It was cute to watch the littlest dancers try their hardest and watch the bigger dancers to see where L is headed. L danced beautifully in both her performances and Daddy was thoughtful enough to have a huge bouquet of flowers from the farmers' market waiting at the end. L was thrilled with them.

We survived and even had a pretty good time. And then we capped off the day with a trip to Ryan's buffet where we all stuffed ourselves silly. It was a great day.