Some recital photos and a few others

On March 8, 2011, a star was born. Or something like that.
Actually, Scout had a "mini-recital" for the dance class that she has been taking through the Harmony School, a local pre-school that also offers some different classes to the public.

Ms. April and the kids, a bit out-of-focus. But there really is a story to tell about all of this, so why don't I start at the beginning...
Here, pictured before the recital begins. On the left, a little girl named Gigi, in the middle is a little girl who I will call "Pink Dot" (more to come on that), and then on the right is our beautiful Scout.
All the children and the parents are crammed into this teeny tiny music room, and when we arrived (about 5 minutes before the recital was set to begin) there was barely a chair left and everyone else appeared to have multiple digital cameras and camcorders. Clearly, we are not only disorganized but also bad parents... we don't even own a camcorder. On this very small stage, there are about 8 circles that are placed across the stage on the floor. Every child is assigned a dot to stand on and it is from this specific spot that they will do their arabesques or whatever.
CUT TO STAGE RIGHT: When there is a commotion over a spot on the floor... "Wait," Ms. April thinks, "Why are there two girls on the same pink dot?"
"Oh," Ms. April says to herself, "why don't I reassign Scout the purple dot since this other girl Pink Dot was already standing on the pink dot." And, by the way, Pink Dot is crying because Scout was standing on her pink dot. Scout is now supposed to stand on the purple dot.
Um, looks like Scout doesn't want to stand on the purple dot. Ms. April gets down to eye level. They converse.
All right, time to start the show. Ms. April gives cues to all the girls.
Okay, arms out! Not so much.
Or maybe arms at the front, hold them out. Nope.
Looks like little Pink Dot is having a decent time. Scout is still pretty upset about the purple dot/pink dot situation.
And, finally, the last shot before the camera battery died.
So, all in all, a very mini mini-recital. And the girls really did do well. I wish we could have seen Scout do any of the dancing that the teacher had taught them, but she was well into her own choreography surrounding the loss of the pink dot. An innovative dance, for sure.

And there are a few other things going on...
Like, we've been toting around tote bags.
I made a variety of tote bags for Ella's birthday party (hopefully we'll have some photos of the party to post soon, too). Here is the "e" bag that went to Ella's cousin Elizabeth. Scout was so kind to do some modeling for me.
Then, of course, we've been doing some playing in the basement. Man, the whole basement thing rocks. I don't know what I did last winter with two kids and no basement. Umm, maybe watched way too much TV?
We also play a lot of dress up... betcha can't guess who this is!
Ha!
And, when not playing dress up, we are really playing "dress down." It's fair to say that at any point during the day, Scout's moods will shift and she will go from playing dress up to something else. That means she will almost always be down to her skivvies when playing just about anything else. Here, she's playing with her princesses and some ribbon.
And this is what a hard working, underwear-wearing girl looks like.