Dance Recital 2011: Butterflies

Fancy's ballet I class danced as "bread and butterflies."  She wasn't crazy about having to wear wings, but I think they all looked adorable.  Fancy enjoyed the rigor of her first technical ballet class, and after the first few weeks she decided she really liked it.  She's going to stick with ballet for next year, hoping to one day get to wear a fancy tutu and dance on her toes. :)

For this performance, I was a backstage mom, so I spent the whole show helping keep the butterflies entertained and somewhat un-mussed before going on stage.  I did have to ask girls to stop dragging each other across the band room floor so their tights wouldn't turn black, and after umpteen bathroom breaks, I was a pro at taking wings on and off.  I also got good at feeding girls animal crackers without smearing their lipstick.

 How Fancy spent a lot of her time backstage

 Hallway full of butterflies, heading for the stage

She was getting rather excited!

Waiting for the curtains to open on her scene

 I believe she was marking her dance before the curtain opened

Beautiful butterflies, all in a row 

 Not a hair out of place

 My view from the wings

Dance Recital 2011: Starfish

By far, Fancy's favorite dance class this year was jazz.  She had a great teacher who really pushed that group of girls and it really showed in the recital.  Now if I can just get Prince's "I'm a Star" lyrics out of my head, all will be back to normal.

Dance Recital 2011: Cats

As these are likely to be photo heavy for the sake of the old blog book (which can I just admit once and for all is taking the place of the scrapbook?  There are just not enough hours in the day...), I'll keep the chatter to a minimum.  I'll just say that we received our recital information sheet earlier this spring and found that our two girls would be performing dances in three recitals over the past weekend, with three different dress rehearsals thrown in the week before.  We braced ourselves for some tired and cranky dancers and stage moms, but we all hung in there and "Alice in Wonderland" turned out beautifully. :)  The girls worked so hard and were so pleased with their dances.  The dance center puts on a fantastic show, and it really makes the girls feel special to be part of such a big production.

Here are photos from Rella's dance.  She took a combination tap and ballet class this year, and her class performed as Cats in the show.  They were adorable.

Missed it by 8!!

After my last post I realized that my little ticker said I've had 25,008 visitors!  I had noted a few weeks back that I was getting close to the 25K mark, and somehow I missed it!  Oh well.   I mostly write and publish photos (and then print the blog in books) for my kids so they will have it to read later in life, but it's fun to share some of our daily family and life adventures with you, too, dear reader.

So thanks for stopping by now and then.  Y'all come back!

p.s. I think this milestone calls for a newly updated header.  If you have any extra time laying around, would you kindly send it my way?

GW in the House!

We knew for quite some time that Hi-Hat was to dress up as George Washington for a classroom assignment.  We weren't completely clear on exactly what the assignment was, we just knew we needed a costume.  Hi-Hat decided he wanted to be creative and dress as a $1 bill.  Since I had experience turning him into a comic strip, I figured a dollar bill would be easy.  I got the green foam board, and there it sat in the dining room for what seemed like weeks.   The weekend before the costume was due, Hi-Hat scrounged up a tricorn hat from a neighbor.  Sunday night we were busy and didn't get the costume made, and with just a couple days before the costume was due, he decided it would be too embarrassing to go to school dressed as paper money.

Geof was out of town the day before the costume was due, and I knew it was going to be a busy evening, so I spent the day scrounging around the house and Target and the Internet for ideas and supplies.  By the time Hi-Hat got home, he had a costume ready and waiting for him (the costume was not the school project - that part was already done.  The costume was an accessory and had no part in his grade, so it was ok to be a family affair).

The first element to figure out was the wig.  I found instructions on how to make a GW wig out of a paper bag, glue and cotton balls.  The instructions said to use a full sized paper bag stuck all over with cotton balls, and the my first attempt was gigantic and looked like a cotton-covered box floating on my head.  It was absurd.  So then I found a small, white, lunch-sized bag and used my own design to apply the cotton.  This involved unrolling the cotton into long strips for the top of the wig and stretching the cotton into long tubes for the side and back curls.  I also used strips of unrolled cotton to make a little ponytail down the back.  The second wig fit perfectly and I think it turned out pretty well!  Hi-Hat was tickled.

Here's the completed costume, pretty much made from things found around the house: loafers, soccer socks, baseball pants, a white polo shirt, a cloth napkin, a borrowed navy blazer (with it's lapels tacked back for a cut-away look), home made wig and borrowed tricorn hat.

Turns out this costume was for the second grade wax museum, where the kids all dress as a famous person and gather in the cafe-gym-atorium.  They all sit like statues at tables with little coin jars in front of them, and when someone dropped a game chip into their jar, they come to life, stand up, and deliver a prepared speech about their assigned person.  It was really cute!

Here's our founding father at the school wax museum (sans cloth napkin cravat, which was also deemed very embarrassing...)

 Frozen in place, waiting for a coin

here he is fussing at us to stop talking to him and asking him questions.  

"I can only talk when you put a coin in my jar!"

 Somehow he didn't mind chit-chatting with his friends, though.

 Cute as a brass button with his quill pen

 Rear view of his pony tail

Frozen again.  I'm glad we went the traditional costume route rather than the paper money route.  All morning he would have been whacking people all morning with that big green board strapped to his back.