Dance Day (yes, again!)

Today was the last day of our last regional competition for this year. It was a LONG but wonderful day. We arrived at the venue at 8:30am, and were in the car headed home at 7:45pm. Ava danced 4 of her 5 dances this morning, and Ben danced his heart out in the afternoon. We snacked, danced in the hallways, and watched more dances than I could possibly count.

I had many special moments today, but here were a few: first, Ava's group performed jazz, ballet, and tap, in that order. They did fantastic in jazz, but ballet... well, ballet was kind of a train wreck. I don't know what happened - they all know the dance really well and have performed it great before, but this time they were all off. As they were walking back into the dressing room, Ava and some of the other girls were talking about how much they messed up, and were feeling a little down about it. I said to them, "Well you may have made some mistakes, but you'll just shake it off and do great in the next one." And you know what? They did just that. They got up on that stage less than 20 minutes later and rocked their tap routine. I was so proud of them for being able to get over a bad experience so quickly and turn out an awesome performance. Additionally, they got their highest scores yet in all of their dances. I told Ava that to me it doesn't matter what kind of trophy they get as long as they are showing improvement in each performance. Today they did just that, and finished the competition season on a very high note. All of us parents and teachers were so proud of our Rising Stars.

Then in the afternoon (in all of our down time) I was able to watch several of our older girls dance their solos. As I watched each girl dance her three or four minutes, I found myself reflecting. So many of these older girls have become honorary big sisters to my kids. We come to these competitions and within minutes my daughters have found a "big girl" to sit with. And if my kids don't find them, the big girls seek us out to say hello. So many of them - Victoria, Veronica, Kaitlin, Wendy, Courtney, Madi, Patience, and more - are beautiful dancers, but more importantly incredible PEOPLE. These young ladies are fierce, strong, passionate, gentle, loving, dedicated, silly, intelligent... in short, amazing. They are just the kind of role models I hope for my girls to have. A few of these girls are graduating and moving on in the fall, and while I am so sad to see them go I cannot wait to see what amazing things they do with their lives. They are yet another piece of what makes this dance family so special. I could not feel more blessed to call these girls our family's friends.