Free Range Family

Last week I once again helped teach the YMCA gymnastics camp. I taught with the other gymnastics teacher Miss Nicole. This camp was for older students and focused on development of the gymnatics skills and mastery of a floor routine. We had 14 great kids that worked very hard each day! I am so proud of them! Great job kiddos! At the end of the week, we taught the students a floor routine to perform for their families. We taught one routine to the girls (splitting them up into two groups) and one routine for our only boy Zach. Nicole choreographed both routines and I do have to say that she did a wonderful job! The music was just right and both routines were so cute! We performed the three routines for their families Friday. All of our students were sooooooooooooooo nervous, but they did so well regardless! Miss Nicole and I are so very proud of them! I just need to take a moment to applaud our only boy gymnast, Zach. He performed his routine alone and even though he was

We usually go to the Montana Fair a lot more in the summer, at least two times in the week that its here, but not this year. We were busy with Diversity's Summer Intensive and with work. The only time we really went was Saturday night with my parents and Aunt Nat and Uncle Jake. Lon and I did not get to spend that much time at the fair though because of the Offspring concert. I was very glad that my mom and Aunt April invited us to go with them Saturday night. The original plan was to go to the Wreckingclowns performance and rodeo first, then the rides and everything else. The Wreckingclowns are a local hip hop dance crew I have been following online recently led by a great teacher, Mister Jeff. Most of his students come from low income families and from hard lives, yet they use hip hop dance as their escape. And let me tell you, these kids are AMAZING! I have never seen a more dedicated group of dancers, these kids are so respectful and passionate. Jeff, you truly are doing gre

Our first dance workshop was very successful! My sister, sister-in-law and son participated as well as a handful of other girls! We had 12 students total I believe! Way more then we had originally thought! Class went very well too, the students learned six different styles of dance. They were all tired and happy at the end of it all! Great first workshop! Having not taken ballet classes in over five years, I had forgotten about the sacred rule about new shoes: you should never were them brand spanking new to a class, your feet will hate you. Dance shoes take prep, lots of them are hard or stiff brand new and some may need some minor sewing done before use. I had purchased new ballet shoes and a leotard for my upcoming lyrical class this Fall, but spaced breaking them in before the workshop. I forgot to sew the elastics and ended up tying them underneath my arches. OUCHIE!!! It hurt so good! I have definitely broken them in since then. But man, that two hours I had to wear them STUNK

Aunt April had practice with her elite company and Theo this afternoon. He is choreographing a group piece for competition later this year. We stopped by to see the progress of the piece and Alan came with us to meet Theo. The company had just finished learning all the choreography and we were able to watch the performance once. I won't give away the exact song but its to a Florence and the Machines song. Love, love, love it! Once again, Theo impresses us all! Beautiful and stunning! Once practice was over, I introduced Theo to Alan. He was shy at first but he warmed up after Theo told him he had the coolest glasses and that he wanted them. Alan then showed Theo his moves and jabbered about everything under the sun lol. Love him so much! Theo even held a quick impromptu ballet class with Alan, teaching him his first position and demi plies. Alan definitely impressed him! :) I love it, I had a major mommy moment then lol! Here are some photos from Alan and Theo's first meeti

I had such a fantastic time at Diversity's Summer Intensive this week! I am so thankful for the oppurtunity to observe classes of professional choreographers. Those choreographers have taught me so much about dance and teaching and motivation. I am so endlessly grateful for them! It has completely prepared me for my dance workshop this weekend and for my dance classes this Fall. Thank you to Lisa, Amantha, Ambrose, Theo, Tessandra and Taryn! You are all wonderful! I was able to take two classes with Ambrose this week. He is Sophia Lucia's (Youtube and Dance Moms) personal mentor, an amazing dancer and an award-winning choreographer. Let me tell you, Ambrose is amazing with kids and is one of the best motivators that I have ever met! He can even convince the quietest student in the class to shine brighter then the brightest star! He convinced an entire class of whiny girls to do 25 push ups! And they were happy and proud of themselves afterwards! What a wonderful dance teacher

We had one of the best weekends ever this past weekend! My sister and her family came down from Missoula for the Montana Fair and to visit family. My mom and I threw her and Benton a Welcoming Shower on Saturday too. I also helped babysit him for the first time ever and loved every minute of it! Alan and Anna love their new baby cousin too! Even Lon was able to meet him! It was a good weekend for us. Saturday, we had two of the three grandparents on my side of the family over at my parent's house for Benton's Welcoming Shower. My mom made pulled pork and pulled chicken sandwiches for lunch and we made sure to take lots of family photos. Both sets of great grandparents met Benton for the first time, it was such a special moment for everyone. Plus, they were able to also enjoy Alan and Anna's company. They were all very happy about it! Anna was quite shy the whole time, and had to snuggle with Mama or Aunt April. She eventually started warming up to everyone bu

Aunt Natalie, Uncle Jake an Benton came into town yesterday from Missoula! We were so excited to finally meet Baby Benton! I was especially excited to help babysit Benton with my mom while Nat and Jake went on their anniversary date. We had a great night! Alan and his robot finger are ready to meet Benton! Anna was quite excited to go meet Benton too! However, she admittedly was more excited to get out of her stuffy car seat lol. I loved holding him and giving his sweet forehead kisses and talking to him and telling him stories and feeding him a bottle and showing him to my own children. I am so "that Aunt" and just enjoyed loving everything about him. He is still so tiny but is soooooooooo adorable. He reminds me a lot of Alan but I can definitely tell that he is my sister's kid. And he looks just like his dad. Oh I love him so much already! It took some time for him to warm up to Benton, but Alan eventually was his best big buddy. He would sit wi

Time goes by so quickly. Benton is almost a month old now and a few days ago Anna turned 13 months old. We have yet to even get her year old photos taken lol! Oops! We seem to be late on everything with our girl. Oh well... she doesn't need to be on time, just on her time. :) So I will go ahead and update you all on her, since I didn't really do that when she turned one. Or did I? I can't actually remember. How lame is that? Oh mommy brain! At thirteen months, Anna Ariel: *is approximitely 21 pounds and 27 1/2 inches long. *has reddish brown shoulder length hair with one big orange streak in it. Her hair is beautiful! And finally long enough for pigtails and ponytails! Yay! *has gray blue eyes with a dark navy ring around the edge. Not sure if her eyes will change to hazel like Lon and Alan's or if they will stay blue like mine. *wears Size 12M or 18M in shirts and 12M in shorts. She is in Size 3 diapers. And she just started wearing shoes this past m

I had my summer showcase and pizza party last night. Both classes performed so well and made me so proud! I even had a HUGE turn out for my older girl's class, I was definitely not expecting that many people! Thanks everyone for coming! And to my students: good job guys! I only had two kids show up for my younger class but they both still did a wonderful job. We danced to Smooth Criminal, Happy and You Know It, and of course the finale YMCA. They are both pretty little, so there was a lot of standing there frozen. :) It was quite cute! I loved little dancers! They did dance some and even performed the moves I had taught them over the summer! I am very proud of my little BBoy and BGirl! Good job guys! Hope to see you again this fall! Love how the little girl wanted to hold my hand. They are both such sweet kids! So I have to share this little bit of dancer nerd in me for you all! Jasmine Harper, my favorite top 10 dancer in SYTYCD, posted a photo on her instagram Tuesd

Aunt April and I met up at Pioneer Park this past Sunday to take some promotional dance photos for our upcoming workshop. I haven't taken dance photos in forever and I was really excited! We took jazz, lyrical, pointe, breakdancing and hip hop photos. It was fun taking them in the park on a nice summer day, the park was busy and we became quite popular fast lol. We had Aunt Ariel, Uncle Kalvin and Alan with us for comic relief (really so they could play lol). It was all pretty fun but it sure was hot out! Yuck! Here are the photos we took on my phone. I have a few more on my camera I will try to post later. Here are the edited versions of the above photos. I really like my hip hop reflections photo! Yes, it turned out pretty cool looking! Here is my promot