Ballerina

Yesterday was the first dress rehearsal for Maria's ballet recital coming up in a few weeks. The dance studio rents time at Marysville High School, where the recital is performed in their auditorium, a few times before the actual recital. The stage they perform on is much bigger than their practice studio, so at the first rehearsal here there's always a lot of figuring things out and working with spacing, etc.

Maria's ballet and gymnastics class were scheduled for yesterday, so we were there between 5:00 and 8:00. We did have a 45 minutes break to meet Sam and Ben for dinner. Anyway, I had been dreading this for a while - thought I would be bored to tears the entire time.

And guess what? I actually enjoyed myself. I brought along my book, but didn't even read it. It was fun to see how everything goes together, and Maria has really gotten so much better at both dancing and gymnastics. This is her fourth year dancing, and she has really come a long way.

I also noticed that Maria was placed as a line leader for the large group number, which shows me she's one of the most dependable ones in the group. And Miss Patty (teacher of older ballet students and studio owner) spoke with me for a minute about Maria. She doesn't know Maria very well since Miss Krista (Patty's daughter) has always been Maria's teacher. But Miss Patty took over for Krista when she took a whole 3 weeks off after having her first baby recently, so Patty has worked with Maria some. Anyway, last night she told me that Maria has such good posture and is a great girl - "a true ballerina." So that was nice to hear too.

I don't think I will enjoy the rest of the rehearsals as much since I've seen all the dances now. But soon it will all be over and we'll have a nice relaxing summer break.

Except for T-ball, golf camp, 4-H (we REALLY need to start on that project!), vacations, etc.