A Joyful Girl...: Everybody Dance Now! {The Story of a Dance Mom}

At the end of May {on Nana's birthday to be exact}, the girls danced in their end-of-the-year dance recital! Their theme was Sweet Shoppe Soiree, and both girls had two dances each. Sydney had been taking a tap/jazz combo class on Monday mornings and Wednesday evenings, and Olivia had been taking a musical theatre class on Wednesday evenings and a hip-hop class on Thursday afternoons {with Brooke}. Traveling to dance three times a week was a lot and I was starting to feel like a dance mom, what with all the anxiety I was having over their performances. Did I mention that of the 31 days in May, 18 of those had either a dance practice, pictures, a rehearsal or a performance? To say that dance consumed our May is an understatement. But it was all worth it in the end.

The day before the recital, we had our dance rehearsal. The girls wore their recital shirts to practice the finale bow before it all began. We had four dances to perform, but lots more to sit through before it was their turn. I wanted to make sure to be here for this because I wanted Sydney's first experience on the stage to be one with her sister and good friends. I was most worried about her and how she would do. Of course, I was not worried one bit about finale bow practice, and that's the one where she melted down. Once I got backstage, she did great though and that really set the tone for the other two dances.

Ms. Sheri went and picked the girls up some Chick-Fil-A, and we broke a few rules eating out in the lobby. Once they finished eating, it was time to change into the costumes, then dance, then change, then dance some more. Rinse and Repeat.

These two looked so cute in their Hard Knock Life costumes! I'm so proud of how great they did!

Brooke and Olivia did their practice twice because their performance included several of the hip hop groups all intertwined into one. The setting of their dance story was a soda shop. Olivia was the boss of the shop and a couple times she has to use her bossy motions to get the kids to work and to stop a group of rowdy tots from partying in the shop. She embraced that role and {in my opinion} really stole the show!

As I had mentioned before, we worked hard on getting Sydney's straight hair to curl. It ended up really cute for the day of the recital.

Once we got the girls made up, we took a few pictures of them in their costumes of their first dances. Liv's first one was the Soda Shop performance, {her little group song was to a Nine to Five remix} and Sydney's was her tap performance to the song If All of the Raindrops Were Lemon Drops and Gum Drops.

We hired our neighbor/babysitter to stay backstage with Sydney and Olivia to help them with costume change and to make sure Sydney stayed excited about dancing. I'm so glad that I did - I felt good knowing she was in good hands backstage and it allowed me to worry only about the 8-10 minutes of performances and enjoy the other 75 minutes of the show!

The girls did AWESOME in all of their performances! We were all so excited and proud of them!

➹ Olivia LOVES her hip hop teacher! ➹

While we were at the recital, we got our dance pictures back from the weekend before. Oh my gosh - they turned out SO great! Love these little beauties!