Dance Recital

Well, we survived Taylor's first year of dance!  Apparently, Taylor tends to have some separation anxiety at certain times- like when I drop her off at dance or when I take her to Primary at church.  She will cry and cry and say she doesn't want to go (although she definitely wasn't the only one in her dance class who did this), but then when it's over, she always comes out happy and says "we had fun today!"

Taylor loves to dance! Anytime we're watching TV and some music comes on, she always jumps up and starts dancing.  Halfway through the year, they had a visitors' week at dance (we aren't allowed to go in the room to watch them dance the rest of the days, and there's no window to look through), and Taylor did good at first until she saw me taking pictures and then she refused to do anything else.  I wasn't too happy since I was so excited to see her.

A couple of weeks before the recital, they had another visitors' week so we could get a preview of what they would be doing at the recital.  Taylor did SOOO good!!  This time, most of the other girls were being shy, and Taylor pretty much did the dance perfectly all the way through! I was so impressed!  One of the other moms said, "She did so good.  You know what that means, right?"  I said, "Yeah... she probably won't do anything the night of the recital!" haha

A couple of days before the recital, we had a dress rehearsal.  The younger girls had a holding room to go to where they got dressed and stayed until it was their turn to go on stage.

Taylor and her best friend, Megan.

The girls had fun just running around, dancing, and playing in the holding room.

Taylor's teacher, Ms. Abbi, getting ready to take them on stage.

They were playing around with the background and lights, and it was very distracting for the girls.  After they were done dancing, Taylor started walking towards the front of the stage and about gave everyone a heart attack because they thought she was going to fall off. Of course, I had the video camera in front of my face, so all I saw was her teacher go running across the stage and didn't know what everyone was freaking out about.  Then, I realized it was my child causing the commotion. She looked at me and said, "I want to sit with you!"

After a long day of rehearsal (she fell asleep with a sucker in her mouth- you know she was tired!)

Day of the recital

I thought she did really well at the recital... not the best I've seen her do the dance because for some reason she was very concerned about staying on her spot, so she kept looking around at the floor to make sure she was in the right spot, but she still did really well. (We technically weren't supposed to take videos of the actual performance because they were selling their own DVDs... which were quite costly, I must say!)  I loved watching the rest of the recital as well.  Watching the older girls dance made me very excited about the years to come.  I just hope Taylor continues to enjoy dancing!

Flowers after her performance.... she didn't care too much about them; she was just mad because another girl got a balloon and she didn't.. haha.  I guess next year I'll know to get her a balloon!

I just had my sil, Alisha, take pictures of Taylor in her dance costume the other day, so I can't wait to see how they turned out!  She definitely didn't want to cooperate at first, and then when she finally allowed her to take pictures, she would only give these cheesy, fake smiles.... although she is pretty enough to be a model, I don't think she'd be a good one.. haha... maybe on a good day.