Dance recital weekend

What a long day! Today was the first of the two day marathon of L's dance recital weekend. She took two ballet classes this year, so she has two dances to perform. She and P are also in both of the "Daddy-daughter" dances, too, so that makes another two dances, although the practice and performance requirements are far less! The dance school has a small Christmas show in a mall every year and a much larger spring Concert. The spring show is three performances, but most of the classes dance in two or three of the shows. I asked the school owner about this the second year L was dancing and was told that it is to help prepare the students for real life performance. Most of the time, they will be expected to perform more than once, and often, more than once a day. This makes for a very busy weekend when the kids are in more than one class, but it certainly teaches them about performance requirements. But, it makes for a long weekend. Today was dress rehearsal during the day and the first performance this evening. We are rather bleary-eyed.

The girls, of course, need to have their hair in a bun for ballet. This has always been a minor crisis because I am terrible with anything to do with hair and makeup. Until this year, the daughter of a friend could always do L's hair. She is the sister of L's best friend, but she is now living in Texas since she finished cosmetology school. So, I am now on my own. In these situations before, I have put L's hair in a braid and twisted it into something resembling a bun. I figured that plus lots of hair gel and hairspray should be passable.

Well, this year, I happened to come across directions for doing a ballet bun in the Sonlight forums (we use Sonlight curriculum). It was actually kind of funny because the person who gave the directions (along with two wonderful websites) is a friend of mine that I knew when I was in medical school who now lives in Texas who I found again on the Sonlight forums!! Anyway, this morning, I went back to that post (it took me about 10 minutes to find it) and studied up on how to do a ballet bun. I did L's hair and got it right the first time around. I was so incredibly proud of myself!! I took pictures of the bun and am planning a scrapbook page just about learning to make a bun! Another mom asked me to do her daughter's hair for ballet since she usually gets one of the older students to do it. So, I did it and showed her how I learned it. L's other friend needed her hair redone, so I did hers, too. And, it looked good. I feel like such an expert. I know this sounds silly - but I am feeling accomplished at my new skill. I tried to put a picture here, but Blogger and I aren't getting along, I guess.

The recital itself was, of course, wonderful. My daughter was beautiful and did a great job. It is amazing to watch all these kids grow up from little kindergartners who didn't know what to do with their arms and legs into young ladies and gentleman who are graceful and accomplished.

Two dances tonight were accompanied by live drums. One was a rather long modern dance improvisation session. It was a pleasure to watch, but was not very good on my head, which had already started to pound. So, I'm off to do some reading and then sleeping. There are two more shows tomorrow. I'm sure it will be a wonderful day!