fun and fancy { free to dance your little heart out }

Feeling a bit melancholy tonight, I bring you what has been a huge part of our life for the last year.

a day in the life { of a dancer }


It was so awesome that Natalie had a chance to be a part of the Dynamite Express team at Dance Connection Too. I love watching her dance. That girl can move! Oh and Lucy too :)

The girls had their recital last week. That means its over. Finito.


I spent most of the previous day at dress rehearsal. I was so wiped afterwards! I think we got home at like 9:30 PM!! It was crazy insane!! But of course I took that opportunity to play with my camera ALOT! I love this one I got of these ballerina girls!


and of course I can't decide on which processing I prefer. I just really love them both for different reasons!




( notice how she's putting her all into this move... i love it! )


Ok I'm not gonna lie... I was not entirely sure how Lucy would do on stage. You know it can be a little iffy with the young ones. i mean thats hilarious and all, but oh the joy of seeing your 4 year old dancing her heart out on stage! I was giddy to see her up there doing all her moves! And with a smile on her face :)!! oh yes it was divine...


Natalie was a little harder to capture as she was ALWAYS in the back! ( see her clear at the back of the stage... nice form huh?!? )


Once again... nice form... way in the back. I just sayin is all...


These are the "firecrackers" of the team, performing their dance Bend and Snap.


We showered these girls with roses afterward. i am so proud of them. They did so so good.

and so it is now over. or is it...

We decided to let Natalie do dance camp again this summer... this is where it all started for us last year! What have I done?!?!?! I love her being a part of such a great team, I can see how she beams with pride every time she wears her Dynamite Express dance shirt to school, which is alot because lets face it she's a bit of a show-off!! Just ask her to do the splits for you, she will eat it up like candy :) !!

And so why not you ask? Do you really have to ask? it. is. so. expensive.

Try-outs are tomorrow. She will make the team, I am sure of it. Here's a little look at some of todays action...

note: She's' the one with the orange tu-tu on her dance shorts... makes her kinda easy to pick out :)



Oh yeah and I am totally loving the FLIP!

...excuse me while I head to B&N to bury my head in some magazines... chow!

A girl and her girl.

Luckilly she said the only thing she'd really miss about field day was the parachute. But not to worry she tells me... we do parachutes in P.E. too.

Oh wishoo. I was so worried :) not.

I know it's not "wishoo" but I typed a few other things in there and they all look wrong so wishoo it is.


First stop. Thomas J. { my hair guy/ bff/we go way back } I'd show you pictures of way back, but I'm scared to know what he will do to my hair if he ever found out. (... ooops, did that say green on the bottle? I better go back and look)

I don't mess around with hair guys, and I don't mess around with food people. Neither should you. They are very powerful.


... and then we ate. and of course we were very polite to the food people :) Not only do we think they probably didn't hock a lougie in our food but we think maybe we got a few extra nuts on our sundae! and then we shopped. ALOT. Oh my gosh I was never so happy to leave the mall in my life!

Everytime I would wander off into the baby sections Natty chimed in...

mom, why are we over here? Were supposed to be shopping for ME!

me... *eyebrows raised high... scared look on face... eyes darting from side to side*

oh my. haha. she was really excited about getting a new outfit!

Do you like it? We found it at Abercrombie kids. I would never think to look there for a dress normally but as we were strolling by the polka-dots pulled me in with their polka-dot powers!



Sometimes i can't decide between color and black and white.


So you get both :)

love you Natty.

Kass... you're next!

p.s. I'm not happy with these photos. Photography is frustrating sometimes. It's ok though because Natty is sweet and she promised me we could do some more on Monday. She must really like her outfit :) !!

Is it just me or does anyone else think the meat in the Jack in the Box tacos is actually cat food?

I have to admit that I slept till 11 this morning.

then I sat at the computer doing almost nothing till 2.

which I followed up by trying to nap until the kids got home from school...

until the guilt overtook me and I actually got in the car to pick the kids up today.

I was soooo tired today, which made me realize that if I was soooo tired after a day of napping and doing not much of anything that poor Natalie must be 100 times more tired than me.

Which is precisely the guilt I speak of.


My Natalie got to perform at a Phoenix Suns game last night. Why it had to start at 8:30 PM on a school night I suppose I will never know. But let it be known we arrived home well after midnight!


Nat: some kids are getting to stay home from school today.

Me: uh-huh.

{ zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz }

Me to Chad upon waking: I should have let Natalie stay home today. What was I thinking?

well anyway... she looked adorable and they did a fantastic job!


this part is particularly a crowd pleaser. Seriously... the crowd goes wild.


These girls put their heart and soul into this.


You can find Natalie the second pretty face from the right on the back row.


Believe me I know these pictures are grainy as all heck! Well before you judge I have 2 words for you...

nose. bleed.

bad lighting+long lens+camera that doesn't handle high ISO well= grainsville.




If you're local and you want to see Natalie perform she will be dancing in the Ostrich Festival Parade tomorrow at 10am in Chandler. The parade route starts at Ray Road and Arizona Avenue, proceeds south on Arizona Avenue to Chicago St.


That being said I had better get off to bed. We have to be there 2 hours early which means we're getting up mighty early my friends :)

g'night!

Oh P.S.- per the title... we stopped at Jack in the box on the way home and got our 14 free tacos the suns won us by scoring atleast 99 points :)

I did not eat one.

they're real and they're fabulous! right. were talking about eyelashes here.

*Hawaii Interrupted*

This morning we got to get up extra early and have some family fun time!

Thanks to this gal...


Pretty isn't she. No you can't have her. She's mine all mine!

and she's my dancing gal.

Today was the Gilbert Day's parade I was telling you about in my last post. Remember? We had to drop Natty off bright and early.

who invited the clouds and the brisk chill in the air? The first chilly day in eons and were front and center taking it all in. In other words no one brought a jacket and we froze, but not to death.


oh wait... I guess Nats had a sweatshirt but I have a feeling those legs were popsicles :)

therse girls were by far the best looking dance team there!


If perchance you're wondering if it's very difficult to get a pony all slicked up that high on ones head, I'm gonna have to go with most definitely!

It's what I like to call the 20 min pony... as opposed to the one I do in my hair which takes T-minus 2 seconds :)

We were so happy Savannah came to hang with us at the parade. And of course Lori too...



Your probably asking yourself what this is even a picture of.

hair people... it's the hair. I'm smitten by her hair.


I'm having high hopes i won't get in trouble for posting a picture of my mom. You know how moms can be a little camera shy at times. Sorry mom I just adored it so :)


the tall bike club... or whatever. No clue who these people are but they can ride bikes stacked on bikes and thats cool. this one was my personal favorite! i think it may have had something to do with pink and a basket.

And here comes our dancers!!


On the float we have the snap caps and the sparklers. Their costume is adorable but due to the use of fishnet pantyhose I think i boycott. It's just kids + pantyhose = spending lots of money buying more.


There she is!! We totally hooped and hollared it up!


Some of her little firecracker friends. Adorable aren't they?





They look pooped. And so am I. I think I will put myself down for a nap.


Oh you'll probably be seeing lots more of these girls on here!

next time just come to the parade like I said to!

my policy is... if you don't try you can't fail.

this is the story of a girl, and her little sister. But mostly the girl...


This girl. Natty. Brave-brave-sir-natty.

On a whim i asked Natalie if she wanted to do the Dynamite Express dance camp last week. She got all excited and giddy like a girl... cuz she is one :) so we hopped in the car and drove her down there full speed ahead. You see I had this idea about 2 minutes before it began... yeah it was a total mad dash.

{ FYI- Dynamite Express is a dance team you can tryout for at the place Natalie was taking her ballet class last year }

While I was signing her up I saw that they had a dance camp for the little ones too...


So I figured what the heck... and next thing Lucy knew she was being hurled into a studio in her little red striped dress and tennis shoes. I know what you're thinking... she's not in a red striped dress and tennis shoes... I said I was in a mad dash. If you rush me I forget things. like cameras.

She wasn't the only one who didn't fit in. As I looked in on Natty I noticed how all the other girls were all glammed up in their fancy dance pants... Yeah. Natly was in socks and dress with leggings. She stuck out a little :)

this photo is actually from the next day...


Which was a trick to get with all the crazy "stage moms" as Katy puts it... GLUED to the window. These ladies do not take bathroom breaks.

But anyway you can see that we helped her out a little with her dancewear. But i got to thinking that those dance shorts look pretty simple to make so when we weren't at dance I was busying myself with figuring out the "booty short".

They were pretty easy.

Henceforth she had a new pair every day :)

These are the ones she wore to the tryouts...


Which I'm not gonna lie. I totally tried to talk her out of doing. She insisted though. It's just that as I watched from behind all the other moms (what does that make me?) I couldn't help but notice that those other girls totally knew what they were doing and poor little Natly with her one ballet class behind her wasn't quite keeping up.

Katy { a.k.a the best stage mom in the world } gave me an awesome tip. On the last day go in and video the dance then go home and practice your guts out! And so I did. And I felt lucky to know Katy because even though most of the other moms also video taped the dance not a one of em taped it from the back as per the instruction from the best stage mom in the world. But I did :)

I tried the dance. I didn't get past 5,6,7,8 and 1,2...? huh? I'm lost. I thought all that dancing i do in my kitchen while i cook dinner was really paying off. Not so apparently.

Katy and her daughter were so kind as to help Natty figure out all the steps to her dance. They did it over and over with her till she couldn't help but remember it. You should see Katy dance. It's pretty impressive.

Katy... you totally would have made the firecracker team!


natalie and lucy reminiscing. Every day Lucy cried and fought me about going to her dance class. Which was shocking to me because her and Natalie play dance all the time. They even have recitals. She talks alot about being a ballerina. Yet every singe day she cried. I had to drag her into the classroom and run for my life out the door.

Till Saturday came. Class ended Friday. Saturday she decided she wanted to go to dance.

"the problem is Lu... there is no class today. Friday was the last day"

and so she cried and cried for hours about not being able to go to class. So there she is looking into her empty class room. it was kinda sad.

Today the results were posted. As you can probably tell by the way she whipped her triple dimple out ( you can see it hovering just above her big cheeky dimple on the right... opposite of her beautly mark, makes for a very symetrical face don't you think? )

she made the team :)

I'm not lying... look for yourself!


And her reaction...



A huge thanks to the lovely and talented Hannah and the best stage mom in the world! This would not have happened without you guys.

I hope we're not in over our heads. We are aren't we.

btw~ if your listening to "Sad Song" and wondering if I don't wanna live no more... well it's just not true. Theres just something I liked about this song (not the words so much)

...makes me want to close my eyes and sleep, and dance in the rain all at the same time.

"PETER JUST CALLED TO SAY HE SAW A SLUG EATING A CHIP"

haha. best line in the whole song.

If I ever have a boy he's totally gonna be in a recital!

yesterday was so fun. We got to go to the dress rehearsal for Natalie's recital "Be Our Guest". Admittedly these top two photos were taken on picture day a week ago. Another easy way to remember when is... the day after she chopped her "bangs" for the second time rendering them quite short. Almost buzz like. On some days it's reminiscent of a mullet.
~ Joe Dirte(ish)~

The first time she chopped them (two days before the bang buzz mullet) they didn't look too bad... in some ways I kinda liked it. Reminded me of Audrey Hepburn.

I started dreaming up an Audrey Hepburn photoshoot...

but then she decided to { even them out }, claiming she { didn't know they were getting shorter }.

And then the dream was crushed. That was the day I was really really cranky.

Perhaps her adventures in hair disasters could have waited till after the recital? I guess not.


Luckily it's hard to tell from the pictures whats really going on {in or on} her head :)

besides lots and lots of hairspray.

And still she manages to look beautiful... I kinda doubt I could pull off a bang buzz.

OK now i have a little song. It's from Sesame Street. Feel free to sing along...

"Most of these kids belong together
Most of these kids are kind of the same
But one of these kids is doing her own thing
can you tell before the song is done..."


"And now the song is done!"

Did you guess before the song was done?? Haha. i love it.

But then there's this next one...


Which is also fun. Natalie told me how some of the girls had to point their arms toward her while she stood in the middle looking very ballerina like...

...I'ts cuz you're the star of the show! I say...

She totally ate it up.

I loved this too.


This is after the dance. They had no clue how to exit. Some of the just took off in the wrong direction. Of course Natalie was one of them!

I've seen kid recitals on "America's Funniest Home Videos" before. I laughed with rest of em... secretly dreaming of the day when I could go to my own kid's recital and be delighted by funny things kids do. It did not disappoint. I LOVED this! I am almost positive I am going to put Lucy in dance now. The recital makes it all worth it . Priceless


Tonight is the actual recital. I can't wait because they don't allow cameras inside tonight. Which means I get to just sit back and fully enjoy the show. Sometimes I feel like I'm documenting things I didn't actually see. I know, I know... you don't feel the least bit of pity for me. I'm ok with that.


You're probably wondering why the heck your listening to Kris Kross right now :) Actually you probably paused it. You did, didn't you? Haha. Come on, unpause the music... live a little.

The last dance we witnessed...

3 boys
D-back shirts, basketball shorts
tearin it up to
oh yeah... "JUMP JUMP"
thats right, i was singing Kris Kross all the way home :)

the mack dad'll make ya...
Kris Kross'll make ya

JUMP JUMP

Everybody now...

K, Lu is trying to watch Bambi. She getting mad at me.

Just sing amongst yourselves!