Dancing Toward Spring

February has come and gone and we are nearly halfway through March. I had hopes for blogging more regularly in 2016 but somehow that just hasn’t happened. Life is good and keeping me busy! I’m going to scatter this blog post with photos as I let the words ramble from my brain to my fingers.

February is usually a month I don’t care for very much, but I honestly can’t complain about the one that just passed us by. We did have our only two snow days so far this school year (fingers crossed that we are out of the woods on those for the year – last day of school is scheduled for Friday June 17th at this point) but for the most part we have had a very mild winter this year. And well deserved after the winter we had last year. February was sprinkled with some good dog walks with friends, a couple fun get-togethers, and seeing my daughters during my February break.
Meghan turned 21 this February! Wow, I am the parent of a “legal” adult.

21st birthday gift from mom to daughter

Meghan had a ballroom competition in February that I attended. Got to see the new ballroom dress in motion and it looked fabulous! Meghan and her partners didn’t place at this competition. I thought she was robbed but I may be just a bit prejudiced.

A surprise invitation to a great show also happened in February. My friend Sherry won tickets to a performance of Lord of the Dance.

If you’re a fan of dance of any kind and you’ve never seen any incarnation of this show (it has had several versions throughout its 20 year history) you owe it to yourself to try to see a show. The power and talent of these dancers is simply amazing.

As we flowed from February into March, all of a sudden it was time for my daughters’ spring breaks from college. How nice for us that Wentworth’s and Clark’s breaks fell on the same week! On the Friday the girls finished classes, my sister and I got into my car and headed out for a bit of a road trip. First stop, Worcester MA, to collect Meghan and lots of her laundry! Second stop, MBTA train station Franklin MA to collect Sarah from her ride out of Boston. Third stop – Cape Cod to spend a weekend visiting my mother. It was chilly but a great visit celebrating Meghan’s birthday and my mother’s. We went out to lunch,

went shopping, and even had a bundled up visit to the beach.

A harbinger of spring I always look forward to is the spring bulb show at Smith College. There was a fun twist on the show this year, which added elemments from Edward Gorey’s The Evil Garden. Sprinkled among the beautiful blooms

were striped-socked legs poking from behind rocks, big hairy bugs, frogs spitting muddy water,

and “peaches, apples, plums and pears, guarded by ferocious bears”

It is the ending Saturday night of spring break as I write this post. My girls are each with their boyfriends this evening, and both will return to school for the final push of the school year tomorrow. Wonderful days are on their way – the official start of spring and more. Hopefully it won’t take me another month and a half to post again about that more!

Six Photos, Six Days, Day 5

Late at night, one of those nights it is hard to sleep. You toss and turn in your bed, wallowing around in that place between wake and sleep, not sure if you’re dreaming or if it is really happening. Your body does one of those sudden twitches and convinces you that you are not actually tumbling away into darkness but living in this strange dreamland. The faceless souls that invaded your sleep are creeping to the edge of your conscience… what do they want? You have to find out… but then…. you are awake…

Real story
This is a photo from one of Sarah’s dances in her last recital. It was choreographed to have a creepy feel to it, and Sarah really got into her part. If you’d like to have an extra taste for the creepiness, click here to be taken to a youtube video of the song they danced to. You may remember that last year, the dance studio that my daughters and I attended sadly closed for business. We stayed in touch with our teacher, and she was able to find a place and the time to teach Sarah and couple friends from the studio so that they could finish their senior year of high school dancing with the woman who had been their teacher since they were little girls. In addition, Sarah got involved in one other class at the studio with another instructor. I glowed with pride when at the recital, during the finale, the teachers came forward to speak about graduating seniors. The new instuctor, who taught the class this photo is from and only knew Sarah for a year, talked about Sarah coming into the class and “taking over like a rock star!”

Heartbroken

Heartbroken. It was all I could think when I heard the news today, day 22.

Our dance teacher has decided to close her studio doors. Her own children are of an age where she has decided she needs to be home with them and the hours a dance studio must keep do not allow this for the parent of school-aged children. It was a heartbreaking, devastating decision for her and for us. This place has been a huge part of our lives for 16 years. Sarah was, of course, looking forward to finishing her senior year of high school while participating in her last full year of dance in the place that she has loved her whole life. It was so much more than a place where my daughters and I took dance lessons; it was our home away from home, a place where many friendships were born and grew and flourished.

I didn’t take any photos today, but I realized I never shared any of the shots I took at dress rehearsal this year. I perhaps would have been better about gathering some extra, more poignant shots had I known this was to be our last dress rehearsal and recital for the Karrie-Lyn Studio of Dance. I don’t have the joy in my heart today to give these photos the proper editing job they deserve, so I am presenting them here SOOC.

Sarah’s jazz solo, “Round and Round” by Ratt

Meghan’s “college girls return” tap dance to “Black Betty” by Ram Jam

Sarah’s ballet dance to the Arabian music from the Nutcracker Suite

Sarah’s lyrical dance to “New York State of Mind” by Billy Joel

Sarah’s jazz dance to “Applause” by Lady GaGa….

… that our dance teacher just happened to have a spare costume for that just happened to fit Meghan

Just thinkin’…

I’m tired. Dress rehearsal for recital was last night.

(Just a few of the very many dances my daughters perform in. Yes, I danced too – no pictures of me to share!)

Achy and tired. But life goes on. My head swirls with thoughts. Recital tonight. Gotta do it all over again. Speaking of doing it all over again, I made Meghan put all her graduation garb back on so we could have some sunny day pictures. Here’s a few favorites:

Proud mama

A kiss for the grad

Having fun with it

School is almost over. Just Monday and Tuesday left. School over, dance over – the pace of life will slow for the summer. Still have the grad party to plan for, but that will be easy with more free time.

These little guys have flown the coop:

Flying the coop. Not too long til my grad does the same.

Searching through pictures. Deciding what to share. I really like the light in this photo, even though the flowers are past their peak:

Still taking photos for the June challenge. Hope you are too.

Dancing in Wonderland

Hello there friends! It is the day before the official beginning of summer and I am finally feeling relaxed.  My last day of school was last Thursday and my girls’ last day was yesterday.  Phew!  70 days off to enjoy.  In addition to the end of school, we are also at the end of the dance season.  This past Saturday night was our recital.  I took LOTS of photos at dress rehearsal.  My daughters and I were in a total of 14 dances: 8 for Meghan, 4 for Sarah and 2 for me.

To anyone who doesn’t consider dance to be a sport, I beg to differ!  Check out the power, beauty, grace and concentration in these photos.

Meghan dancing to “Glitter in the Air” by Pink.

Sarah dancing to “Clocks” by Coldplay.

Meghan dancing to “Painting Flowers” by All Time Low.

Sarah dancing to “Bad Influence” by Pink.

“Alice in Wonderland” was the theme to recital this year.  All dances had some connection to the tale.

As I said, I took many more photos (if we are friends on Facebook, you can see more there) but these are all that I’ve edited so far.  And I have the feeling a couple more just might make their way into this month’s photo hunt!  Are you working on yours?  I can’t wait to see what you shoot.

A Week in the Life, Day 2

I must tell you how pleased and surprised I was with everyone’s interest in a little peek into my life!  Thanks again, everyone, who stopped by and left a comment – and those of you who popped over from Adventuroo, welcome!  I’m looking forward to peeking in on your lives too.

On to Tuesday!  It is always a busy,  non-stop kind of day for me, and today was no exception.  Not a holiday today, so back to work.  My work days start before the sun, with breakfast while it is still dark outside:

Bags ready to go, the girls head to the bus stop and I to my car when the sun has been up for maybe 15 minutes.

This is the time I pull into the parking lot at work (middle school in a neighboring town), while I listen to a last few comments of the DJ’s on my morning radio show.

Nice thing about being up and off to work so early is that it is still bright and sunny when it is time to go home.

Of course in this profession, school bus traffic is part of the commute.

Upon returning home, I found hubby hard at work on getting that darn pool closed.  Working on it, maybe tomorrow…

And Sarah needs help with her algebra homework (good thing I have a mind for numbers!)

Then it is time to drive dear daughter to dance.

And a swing by the grocery store for some fresh bread to go with dinner

Hubby had the day off (police officer, works nights, rotating day off schedule) and so he got dinner going.  Tonight it was tender, marinated brisket on the grill:

While dinner finished cooking, I made a bit more progress on the baby quilts.

After dinner, it was back to the dance studio – but for me!  Tap class at 7:00 and jazz at 8:00:

Home from dance, get stuff ready for work tomorrow, write this blog post!  I’m pooped!

The Elements of Dance

Tonight is our annual dance recital, and the main reason I’ve been away from the blogs this week.  I did pop around and comment to many of you this morning!  The theme for recital this year is “The Elements of Dance”:

 That is the very cool t-shirt our dance teacher had made up this year.  All of the dances relate in some way to either earth, air, fire or water.  My girls have been working very hard both on their dances (14 dances feature one or both of the girls or me!) and with helping out getting ready for the recital.  Dress rehearsal was last night, and the only time flash photography is allowed.  I took 124 photos last night!  Here are two of my favorites:

This is Meghan in a beautiful layout-prep for her jazz dance, “Rock You Like a Hurricane,” by the Scorpions.

This is Sarah in a wonderful heel-stretch during her jazz dance “Firework,” by Katy Perry.  Sarah worked hard stretching all year to be able to achieve this dance move.

I am MUCH happier with my camera this year than I was last year at this time, BUT I’ve made a new discovery.  I think my next purchase for my camera will have to be a Speedlite flash.  The built-in flash cannot keep up with the speed at which I was hoping to take photos.  Lighting conditions are absolutely terrible at a dress rehearsal and I could not find a combination of shutter speed and aperture that would have allowed me to go without flash AND have decent stop-action, at least with the lenses that I currently own.  I have the feeling that a lens that might allow such a combination is likely out of my price range.

I’m sure I’ll be sharing more photos when I have time to do some more editing.  In the meantime, wish us luck tonight!

What kept me so busy that I…

…forgot to do Scott’s assignment this month, which was due today!

As I was griping last week, it has been rather rainy here recently, but the sun poked out this weekend.  I was going to do Scott’s assignment (really!), but as happens to us all, life got in the way.  Spent Saturday morning running errands with hubby, getting those peppers we wanted, and while we were at the garden center, treated myself to this:

It is a big, beautiful fuschia plant!  I hung it near my hummingbird feeder, in the hopes of attracting more hummingbirds.  My hummingbird has been visibly absent lately – I hope I didn’t offend him or her when I let the feeder go a wee bit too long before cleaning it out.  Hey Mr. Hummingbird! It is clean now, I promise!  And I bought you a fuschia too!  Please come back.

After all the errands, I had to do what I am sure many of us had to do after all that rain – mow the lawn!  Saturday evening I spent working, working, working on a project I’m feeling pretty good about, but unfortunately cannot share with you all just yet.  There is an extremely, ridiculously slim chance the recipient of said project could happen to read this blog post, and I can’t have that!  I’ll fill you in on the mystery in a couple weeks.

Sunday was a practically-all-day-long-annual-affair for this dancing family.  The girls and I had picture day at the dance studio.  On this day, we go to the studio with all our costumes for recital to have professional photos done.  Doesn’t sound like it should be practically-all-day, does it?  It is when one purchases 15 costumes for recital!  Eight for Meghan, five for Sarah and two for me!  Ay-yi-yi!  Of course I took a few shots of my own too.  Here’s a little slide show sampler (please excuse the squinty eyes – not much shade to be found in the parking lot of the studio!):

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What do you think, Scott?  Are you buying my excuse? 😉

Take Some Time Out – Picture Fall, day 12

Although I’m not sure exactly what today’s photo prompt has to do with fall, our instructor wanted us to “take some time out” today, and compose a photo showing something you love to do.  Besides taking photographs, dance is one of my loves.  I never studied it as a child, but I picked it up after watching my older daughter love it so much as a little one.  Now it has become two hours a week that I always put aside for myself, to enjoy being with other adults who enjoy the same activity, and get some great exercise in the process.  These days, my two daughters and I spend so much time at the dance studio among the three of us, our dance teacher joked at our last recital that it was our family show.

Butterfly Fly Away

The butterfly metaphor post.  After the comments I received in the “voting” post, I hope this doesn’t disappoint!

About a week ago, my girls and I received our video of our recital.  It is something we look forward to watching together each year.  We complain about the mistakes we made and how we wish the videographer had done this or that, but mostly we enjoy reliving our big night.  As we watch, we also talk about things we heard from friends and relatives who watched the show about things that happened and favorite parts of the show.  One unexpected reaction that we heard about was one of Sarah’s dances turning out to be the “tearjerker” of the show.  Usually, each year there is at least one dance that is so sweet is causes a few joyful tears to flow.  One year it was a beautiful mother-daughter duet done by dear friends of mine.  I didn’t have a strong reaction to this dance myself, I think, because I was caught up in the hurry, hurry of the night.  As I think back about it now, I understand.

(Sarah pictured center)

Sarah’s class was a group of 13 girls aged 9-12 dancing to Miley Cyrus’s Butterfly Fly Away.  We are not Miley fans in this house, but this song was sweet.  Included in this class is a darling girl who happens to have Down’s Syndrome.  She did well in the class but needed some prompting to be where she was supposed to be.  The girls in the class handled this very well, and their cooperation seemed to add to the charm of the dance.  The lyrics of the song couldn’t help but remind the families of the dancers that it wouldn’t be very long before our butterflies fly away.

(Sarah pictured left)

Sarah is my younger daughter, but as I’ve mentioned before, my older one is in high school.  It won’t be long before college is breathing down our necks.  Sarah “officially” becomes a teenager in a few weeks.  Where is the time going?   As parents, we all hope that we have “done right” by our children, so that when our butterflies do fly away, they will  be able to “take those dreams and make them all come true.”