ADA Competition

To say Ali is in love with dance is an understatement... She really has been so excited about her dance classes this year even her turns class and cecchetti (which are pretty much technique type classes- stretching- lots of repetition and form).  She talks about her posture and other things and is working more than I've ever seen her in the past.
Sadly, Ali lost her dance jacket before her last competition.  To say this was a blow was an understatement... We looked EVERYWHERE (the studio, her school, the high school where her talent show was) and couldn't find it.  Obviously she needed a team jacket for awards so the owner (and one of Al's favorite teachers), Miss Lauren, let her borrow her jacket.  Most girls would be over the moon about this but Ali was embarrassed.  She kept trying to cover it up since the jacket said "Classy Dancer" and "Director" on it (and she was neither).  I assured her that all the girls would KNOW this (duh) and knew about her lost jacket but she didn't want people to think she was trying to be something she's not and she wanted to EARN the jacket not wear someone else's (that was actually pretty cool- kind of like the girl who wants to EARN her letter jacket instead of wearing her boyfriend's... AKA Ali's mama).

The girls did GREAT and it was a fun show to watch.  They were singled out for their great technique which was cool and earned a high silver.  The competition was about an hour behind because the videographer was late!  This would be kind of annoying except for the fact that to remedy the situation, they gave EVERY dancer a video of EVERY dance they were in.  Pretty cool.  I have to say I was as impressed by that as I was the dancing we saw.

The highlight of the weekend though came the next day when Lauren emailed me THIS picture!!  That's right... Someone from another studio (ironically I learned later that it was my former dance studio) found it back at the high school where Ali's talent show was (there was a dance competition there that weekend) and waited until the next competition we were both at to return it.  WOW!  To say Ali is excited is an understatement!  The only down side is that I was kind of liking the extra chores she was doing to earn money for a new jacket.  I told her if she wants, whenever she does earn that 'next jacket,' she can put her earned money toward that... I was kidding but Al said, "That's a great idea, mom!"  Can I freeze this moment in time.  I have a feeling this attitude is not going to last forever but I'm going to ride this wave as long as I can!! ;-)