At the beginning of December, I went up for a very quick trip to Utah. Mom and Dad had put together another Reader's Theater and I wanted to view one of the performances. Because it was so quick (Friday night to Sunday), I only took Jason with me. I must say...Jason was a rockstar in the car and I was able to drive straight through.
The night we got there, there was a big snowfall. Jason loved getting dressed up and out into the snow. The only problem was that his gloves kept falling off and so he wanted to come inside and get undressed. After he got undressed, he'd immediately want to get redressed and do it all over again. That was fun. (I was so busy dressing the child up, that I never really got a picture of him.) Jimmy and his kids came over that next morning to play. Russ came over for a few hours, and even though he wasn't dressed for the part, Jim and I decided that he wanted to play as well. Good sport.
Just that next week, Alaina was in two separate shows. One was a dance show and the other was for her glee class. (Both classes are at the same place.) There are several things that I really like about these classes that Alaina takes. For one, each kid, regardless of their experience or talent, gets a solo. I love that everyone has a chance to shine. The drawback is that you have to sit through every child while they shine. And sometimes, that isn't the easiest thing to do. There were some real doozies in that group. However, since everyone was very amateur, it meant that the audience was extremely supportive and the kids felt safe getting up on the stage.
The second thing that I really loved about this group is the amazing (And I mean, absolutely amazing) costumes that they provided the kids. Every song had a different set of costumes. All of them were well made and fit the girls beautifully. In both Alaina's group as well as the older group that performed with them, there were a lot of varying sizes of girls. I couldn't believe how good they all looked in their outfits. (I think someone actually comes and sizes them to the girls.) So, yeah. That is pretty awesome.
After all that, I still decided to take Alaina out of the classes. My problem was that the older group had been with the company for a long time. This group of very nice girls still weren't very good at singing or dancing. It might be a fun, safe place to perform, but they need to get some better teachers. :(
None of that stopped me from loving every second we got to watch Alaina on stage. She looked beautiful and is so expressive. I love watching how much she enjoys being up on a stage. There were a lot of nervous girls up there, but our Laina looks like she's been doing this for years.
