Recital Day

Between the graduation party, the dance recital, and Father's Day, last weekend was pretty much a blur of activity. As if that wasn't enough, I've been sick since Sunday (but am finally starting to feel better). So this post is really late, but here it is.

Getting Ready

Sunday was the big day! Yup - Rebecca's recital day. We were up and at 'em early - me gelling, curling and pinning (her hair), while Greg drove to Pepperell and back to pick up her sisters. There was a change in venue this year which pushed the start of the show up an hour and a half, 11 AM was our target arrival time at Quinsigamond Community College. Rebecca's first dance, the tap routine, was third in the program, and her second routine (tumbling) was 33rd (or 4th from the end), so we were sat through the entire 2+ hour recital.

After the tap routine (which was great), I went backstage to get her into her tumbling costume. Unfortunately all that gelling and spraying had taken its toll, and an elastic was hopelessly knotted in Rebecca's hair. No one had scissors, so I pulled and Rebecca cried until finally another Mom, more talented at the whole hair thing, intervened and managed to get the elastic out (a big clump of her hair came with it but at that point I was happy to take what I could get). At least my daughter was happy in her costume, unlike the adorable littlest clown who was declaring her costume was too itchy and refusing to put it on.

Sisters

Seems our troubles backstage were an omen of things to come. Routine 2 started out well, but soon disaster struck. There is a point when the little kids jump in circles in the back of the stage while the older kids run off stage and come back with hula hoops. This is the signal to is the younger kids to stop jumping in circles and do somersaults through aforementioned hoops. Unfortunately, the hula hoops were erroneously placed on the wrong side of the stage. Already on shaky ground, the poor kids didn't know what to do. The bigger kids ran back and forth and then finally decided to do somersaults back across the stage to get the hula hoops. By the time they got that done, they were way behind in the music and had to skip ahead to the next part of the routine. All the while, the little kids (including Rebecca), kept jumping in circles in the back, waiting for the hoops. This kept up until the last 15 seconds, when everyone finally figured out what they were supposed to be doing. So it was basically 30 seconds of the routine, a minute and a half of jumping in a circle, and then 15 more seconds of the routine. I'm so glad I took her to all those extra practices for the past 2 months so she could learn the routine.;-) I did feel kind of bad for the kids because they worked so hard to learn it, but these things happen. Good thing they are little enough that pretty much anything they do is somewhat cute.