Dance Adventure

We entered a new venture this last fall... dance. Something that I did when I was about Carly's age until my oldest sister, Cammy, decided to pick horses over dance. Hunter got out of school at 3:05 and dance didn't start until 4:15. I never really figured out how to spend that hour before dance started. Some days I'd get her ready before we picked up Hunter and we'd drive around until it was time. Other days, we'd go home inbetween picking up Hunter and I'd get sidetracked doing something else and we'd inevitebly be late. One thing was always for sure though... Carly would always fall asleep on the way. I hated that. Hated that I had to wake her up and send her tired little self off to someone else. She'd always emerge at the end of her class happy though- Always full of smiles with a sticker on the front of her dance leotard and a candy in her hand. She loved it. We're trying to decide if she'll dance again this fall. If she does, I'm taking her somewhere else. Communication wasn't one of their strong points at all at that dance studio and I felt a bit lost all year. It wasn't just me, either. Other mom's were lost and confused too. Also, they started dancing last September and didn't have any kind of performance until the 2nd week of May. I was a little disappointed about that. I was also floored to discover just how expensive it really was to put a 3 year old in dance. $35 a month for lessons, $49 costumes (used in only 2 performances, hers currently is being used as her "new" swimsuit), $19 "competition fee" + $5 per person to get in to see her at Taylorsville High School, and the ultimate shock, her $50 recital fee that was being held at Kearns High. Do you know how many girls were at that recital and they were getting $50 from every one of them?!? I'm sure it didn't cost that much to rent the auditorium. Oh and while at the recital, you could not take flash photos OR video the performance. What the heck? They wanted to charge us $25 for a CD with her 3 minute dance. Forget that, we recorded it anyway. That's like taking my kids to a horse show and them telling us, "Sorry, you can't video your kids running barrels" So when Dance was finally over and 4-H was started, I was really appreciative of the nominal fee to participate: $36 per child for the whole season. That included 3+ months of wednesday night practices at the Riverton Arena AND 3 horse show competitons. Whew! Thank goodness for 4-H! That dance studio was just all about the money. Okay, I'm getting off my soapbox now. Enjoy her dance pics from her two performances (And if I can actually get my videos to load, I'll put them on too!) By the way, when I tried making the pictures bigger, they looked all pixel-ey and not good at all. Might be because I loaded them straight up from blogger instead of from Picasa. Don't know. Anyhow, wish they were bigger, but they aren't.


Dance competition at Taylorsville High School.


Taylorsville High School.


At Taylorsville with her trophy. Everybody "won" a trophy. She's so proud of hers!


Taylorsville.


Recital at Kearns High School


Kearns High School.


Lisa and her kids came and watched Carly. Makayla was so sweet and brought Carly some flowers!




Now, if I can just get those videos to post correctly...