This past weekend was Ella's last competition of the season. We were scheduled for one more next week, but (thankfully) it was cancelled because of a scheduling problem. Our other competitions have been mostly local, but we headed south for the beach this time and spent a few days together in the sand. At the last competition, I forgot to pack Ella's fishnet tights and caused quite the commotion. We danced in tan tights instead, but I vowed never to forget anything again. I had checked her bags against our check-list twice before we left home, but the first thing I did when we got to the condo was to lay everything out and check it all one more time! We started our day in swimsuits and crazy hair and spent some time out on our balcony before trekking down to the stage area to set up ...
Search Results for: dance
Platinum Dance | In Ella’s Words
This weekend was a whirlwind. Josh had baseball games, I was wrapping up design orders, our family welcomed a new baby into the mix and we spent the better part of our Saturday watching tiny people dance. When Ella started dancing five years ago, I had no idea competitive dance was even a thing. I was vaguely aware of the television drama that follows a group of dancers around, but that was so far out of my daily norm that it probably didn't even register. Last year was her first year to compete and we were clearly the new kids on the block. In all honesty, after the complaints about being exhausted all year long, I never expected her to want to do it again (let me interject that she LOVED competing, it was the practice she tried to avoid). The fall of this year was what you'd expect ...
My Dancer
Alternately titled, the post with 35 photographs. Yes, I counted. I've mentioned that Ella is on a competition dance team several times, but I've not gone into much detail about what that really means. I put Ella in a "tiny dancer" ballet/tap class at a local studio right before her third birthday. She was such a mature child and really in need of some organized extra-curricular activity. She loved it from the very beginning and danced with that same group of girls for three years. At the end of last season, her instructor mentioned that they would have a competition team this year for girls aged 6-8 and told us she had referred Ella for that class. At the time, we thought she would have to audition and decided to let her make that decision when the time came. Fortunately for us (and not ...
Tiny Dancer
Thursday night was Ella's last ballet class of the year. Parents and Grandparents got to come in and watch and we all brought Christmas goodies for a holiday party before the Christmas break. You can see in the photo above that Ella lost one of her ballet shoes and we were forced to wear our Sunday shoes instead! Luckily, her Easter shoes still fit, we just swapped out the ribbons for pretty pink ones and nobody seemed to notice. The girls were excited to have us there and it was so funny to watch them dance. They did two Christmas routines and a dance to the Mickey Mouse Club song. Some kids were really free spirited and danced all around. Ella was very focused and checked her feet a hundred times to make sure she was standing in her spot! I think she's really worried about minding ...
Quarantine Diary | Days Three, Four, + Five
I will be documenting our experiences, during the COVID-19 pandemic, to preserve this time at home together. Although the world is a very scare place at the moment, I want to be intentional about our days at home together and provide my children with the story of what it was we lived through. Day One for us was Monday, March 16th (I'm counting down starting with the first day our regular schedules were disrupted) -- the first day the girls didn't report to school. Wednesday, March 18, 2020 Despite the major disruption in our lives in the previous few days, Wednesday felt like the first day I was in complete control. Orangetheory had closed a few days prior, but I had been working out in the office of my basement, in an attempt to keep things as normal as possible. When I arrived at ...
Quarantine Diary | Day One
I will be documenting our experiences, during the COVID-19 pandemic, to preserve this time at home together. Although the world is a very scare place at the moment, I want to be intentional about our days at home together and provide my children with the story of what it was we lived through. Day One for us was Monday, March 16th (I'm counting down starting with the first day our regular schedules were disrupted) -- the first day the girls didn't report to school. Monday, March 16, 2020 I've been trying to figure out how to blog more often and also how best to share during this very bizarre time of our lives. Since I now have a lot more extra time on my hands, I decided to share something akin to diary entries for the duration of our quarantine period (or after, depending on how ...
The Best of 2019
I still have so many things from December (and November!) that I want to share here, but I feel like I need to press pause and post a few things that are more thematic for the month of January. I've been trying to look back on 2019, see what worked for us -- and what didn't -- and really think about how I want 2020 to look. I've been sharing an annual recap on the blog since I finished the first calendar year here and it's always one of my favorite things to look back on. For the past two years, I shifted away from the "recap" formula and instead shared some of our favorite moments from the year. I might not have blogged as much in 2019, but that doesn't mean we weren't taking plenty of pictures or spending our days making the very best memories together. The Best of January After ...
What’s Up Wednesday | September 2019
What We're Eating This Week | I told you guys last month, that we were trying Hello Fresh, and we have really enjoyed it! We've ordered three meals a week for the last five weeks and we haven't had a single meal that we didn't love. I need to do a full post or some Instagram Stories on this topic, but the gist of it is this: the thing we loved most about a meal delivery service is the lack of decision fatigue. Sure, we had to choose the meals (three out of 12/15 available options), but my kids were more willing to eat it since someone else chose it. It's the weirdest thing?! For this reason, we're going to skip the next few weeks and try eMeals. It's significantly less expensive and will require me to do the shopping, but will still give us varied meals that (hopefully) my kids will be ...