Alli's First Dance Recital

Alli's first dance recital went really well!  And here I thought everything was stacked against us.  First, we've been fighting her for months to go to dance lessons.  She started them, I was going to make her finish them before she quit.  Recital time came and she didn't seem thrilled with the costume.  And then to boot, the day of the recital I had to drop her off backstage and then not see her again until after the whole recital was over.  No parents backstage, no snacks, no extra bags of toys.  So 2-3 hours backstage starting at 11:30 for a just-turned-5 year old.  I figured we were for sure done.

But then the day came.  After Alli did her dress rehearsal, we stayed at the auditorium for another hour to watch some of the other dance acts.  These were mostly the other little kids (not the big kids).  She really enjoyed watching the other dancers.

And recital day?  We lucked out.  I packed snacks for her to eat (carefully) in the car, so she was set for food (actually better than we were!)  Backstage, they had all the girls split between 5 different rooms.  As luck would have it, she wound up in a room with all the Belt girls, so she was well taken care of and had friends all around (well, 3 of them, plus the girls in her class).

And when she got on-stage, she just looked so cute.  They all did.  Alli couldn't see us, so she didn't look out into the crowd for most of the dance - she just looked at the girls to each side of her.  But she had a blast.

And wouldn't you know it - signup for fall started the day after the recital, so guess what she wants to do.  Yep, another year of dance.  After all that fighting we did over the last few months dragging her to dance class.  Well, we'll see what happens next year at dance!

(Alli is in the middle.)