Balle-Neenas!

Here's something else that we've got going on this summer.



Isn't she just the cutest little ballerina (or balleneena as Clara calls them). She's taking a ballet/tap/gymnastics class during the summer and is excited as can be. When I signed her up last week, we peeked in on her teacher teaching the 4-5 year old class. Clara started crying when we walked away yelling "Neenas! Neenas!". I think dance class is going to be a bit hit. We'll have to get Aunt Linsey to show us some of her moves. Hmmm, I wonder if I can find a picture of Aunt Linsey back in the day. I seem to remember one especially cute costume. Oh heck, they were all awesome; I might have to put 'em all up here :)


Here's another Clara approved outfit from today. I think I'm going to have to put all of her clothes out of reach because she's changing her clothes all. day. long.




Tonight we got to take advantage of a company perk. Chris' new company has a box at The Pavilion and employees can sign up to win the tickets for every concert that comes to town. Chris won the tickets tonight, so the three of us saw the Houston Symphony Orchestra: Let's Dance. We had free VIP parking and access to the VIP lounge. The parking was awesome; not the 1 mile hike you usually have to endure. Chris will be putting his name in the pot quite frequently, I'm sure. He was bummed he didn't win the Police/Elvis Costello tickets last night.


Before the show, they had a few dancers performing in the plaza, a make-a-dancing-star craft and an instrument petting zoo. They let you pick up the instruments and play them (they wiped them down with alcohol pads after every person). Daddy is demonstrating proper trombone embouchure here. I can't believe I remembered that word. I just impressed myself.

And here we are in our box before the show. The show consisted of different dance pieces. The first was the can-can song and they played the waltz from Sleeping Beauty. The highlight for Clara was a piece that included a performance by about 10 members of the Houston Ballet. She was in the aisle trying to mimic their dancing. It was so sweet I couldn't stop smiling. She is sooooo going to love being a ballerina.

I think it's funny how it's so natural for little girls to love princesses and ballerinas, even without prompting. I think she's had one pair of ballerina pajamas and that's about all it took to fall in love with ballerinas. She's never seen them in person until tonight but has been enamored with them for a while now. Oh, and now she has one on her quilt, so she's pumped. She's all about ballerinas now. And she had never seen a princess movie and didn't even know their names, but by golly, she knew the princesses were something special from very early on.