Spring Recital

Clara's recital was tonight. It was kind of a pain this year with Robert being such a busy guy that prefers not to do anything he doesn't feel like doing. Clara's class danced first though and he actually sat through her whole dance watching intently. For most of the rest of the recital, Chris or I was up walking around with him.

We weren't in a good position to get good pictures. She was behind this girl at the other end of the stage for both dances.

I was surprised to hear them playing lots of contemporary Christian music. It was playing before the recital started and between the dances and a couple of the classes even danced to some Christian songs that weren't overtly Christian sounding. Clara's class danced to the Christian song called "Hold Me".

Ironically, there were several dances that I felt were not appropriate for a children's dance recital, one of which was "Single Ladies" by Beyonce. I admit the song is catchy, I cracked up at the SNL parody of it, and when I hear it I find myself singing it. That said, I don't think 7 and 8 year olds have any business dancing to a song about being in a club, wearing tight jeans, with a guy, saying "Don't be mad when you see that he want it. If you liked it then you shoulda put a ring on it."

Call me a prude.

I mean really. There are plenty of wonderful, family friendly songs out there to choose from. That and a few of the dance moves in the older girls' hip hop dances left a bad taste in my mouth. I was pretty sure that this was going to be her last year of dance, but this kind of sealed the deal for me (for this studio at least). Even if she's not participating in the hip hop dances, I still feel like going to the studio is endorsing it and I want her to know what is and isn't appropriate for little girls.

More Holiday Festivities

Like most families I'm sure, this past week was our busy holiday week. We were supposed to go with our life group to listen to Christmas music on Sunday but it was very cold and windy and I just didn't want the kids out in it after just getting over their ear infections. So we skipped out on that one. On Tuesday evening, we had Big Robert and his family over to build gingerbread houses. Daddy made Clara her very own graham cracker house to decorate all by herself, which she loved.

That way, she didn't mess up our gingerbread house :) I do a good enough job of that myself.

Then on Thursday night we had two activities scheduled for the same time, so Clara had to choose which to attend. She had her school Christmas program and her dance recital and she chose to dance. Her class danced to Jingle Bell Rock and they all did very well. She was the girl furthest from us though, so we didn't get good pictures of the actual dance. I love her dance studio. The Christmas show includes only 6 songs and is done in about 30 minutes. That is much appreciated when you're wrangling a one year old the entire time.

Friday was her Christmas party at school. Since she doesn't attend on Fridays, I had to take her up there. Her teacher decided to do their book gift exchange earlier in the morning because it's so crazy during their lunchtime party, so I took Clara up at 10:30 to do the exchange. She got a Tangled book with a read along cd. It only took about 15 minutes and then we had to leave and come back up at 12:00 for the party since she's not supposed to be up there on her non-school days. Oy. I didn't want to drive all the way home just to have to turn right back around, so we hung out at a nearby Wal-Mart for an hour.

I have a major dislike of Wal-Mart in general, but Wal-Mart the week before Christmas is just plain awful. It really brings out the worst in me. I was ready to hit someone just dealing with drivers in the parking lot. Can you really not be bothered to park two spots further down from the obviously perfect spot which you are wasting my time along with the 5 cars behind me to get? I guess I shouldn't complain since I got a really great spot only two spots down from the perfect spot.

Her class dined on Chick-fil-a chicken nuggets, grapes and cheese and then had cupcakes and cookies for dessert. Clara received a stocking from her teacher which included this cute ornament with her handprint.

That's the Jingle Bell Rock

Wow, that's a bad video. I'm guessing only Grandma and Bia will truly appreciate this one. Clara is on the back row, furthest on the right. Sorry it's so bad; Robert really wanted more raisins and I was trying my hardest to pluck them from the little box while holding him and the camera. I didn't do a very good job obviously.

Spring Recital

Clara's big spring dance recital was on Sunday. Grandma and Grandpa timed their visit so they could be here for it again this year. I treated Clara to a little makeup this year. She got some lipstick, a little blush and even mascara. She loved getting to wear makeup.

It was at the same high school auditorium as last year but thankfully they reworked the lineup so that there were only 13 dances during Clara's performance instead of the 27 we had to sit through last year.

They were able to accomplish this by combining several of the younger classes so Clara's class danced with one other class. It was a bit crowded on stage with 17 girls, but it worked out ok and I'm all for not sitting through 27 dances again.

The recital was a tribute to Michael Jackson, so all of the dances were to his songs. I loved it and was singing along to most of them. All of the costumes were black and white and only the lighting changed for each song. It made photographing difficult though. One of Clara's dances had red lighting and the other was blue. One of the more advanced classes danced to Thriller which was really cute. Their costumes were tattered and torn, their hair was teased and their makeup looked great.

Clara managed to get through a recital without drawing attention to herself in some way for the first time. She's growing up I guess. She did great and I could really tell she's matured a lot since her last recital.

Here we all are with our favorite dancer after the show.