Week 36 ~ Movies, Performances and Chihuly

We are so close to the end of the year. We are transitioning into summer a little bit more day by day. Our half-day lessons are going well. This week we logged about 12 hours of school (not including Anne's dance hours which are divided into Physical Education credit and Performing Arts credit).

The last dance classes of the school year were wrapped up this week at our full-time studio. There will be two weeks of dance intensives in July. The Cecchetti ballet classes will continue as usual all summer long. The first four performances of Alice in Wonderland were a roaring success. All eight shows are sold out and Anne is looking forward to performing in the last four shows this weekend. Then it is off for her Cecchetti exam in South Carolina. She did great in her mock Cecchetti exam this week, so hopefully all will go well.

The last dance class of the year was held outside.

These girls did a marvelous job this year (Junior Company 2018).

My sweet Caterpillar!

Anne is the caterpillar (the one in a white costume and a green hood).

We used our Biltmore annual pass to go see the gorgeous Dale Chihuly exhibit this week. We took a friend a piece for the kids and enjoyed it immensely. The glass sculptures are wonderful, and since we went during the week, it wasn't terribly crowded. There are 16 glass sculptures on the property. I loved the boat with the floating balls the most. It was gloriously sunny the day we went. I can't wait to see them again in different types of weather.

From left to right (H, Anne, Dean and F)

We had our last Literature/Movie Club with friends this week. We enjoyed seeing Rear Window, which is my favorite Hitchcock movie by far.

School this week ~

• Watched Gone with the Wind (Dean and Anne)
• Watched Rear Window (Dean and Anne)
• Read Who Is Harriet Beecher Stowe? (Dean)
• Read 5 chapters of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Anne)
• Visited the Chihuly exhibit (Dean and Anne)
• Took mock Cecchetti exam (Anne)
• Researched cat care and bonding techniques (Dean)
• Performed in Alice in Wonderland 4 times (Anne)

Dear Husband is off to a memorial for his Godmother and will be gone for the entire weekend. We will miss him, but we are glad he won't be gone a long time like during his military days. We will have an extra teen with us some of the weekend, since she needs some place to stay while her family is away on a trip. Hopefully, we will have calm fun so that we don't over tax Anne's introverted system before we drive to South Carolina for the Cecchetti exam.

I am also praying that the giant storm coming in from the Gulf Coast doesn't hit us too hard and close the highways again. We had a huge storm last weekend that caused mudslides a few counties away. That storm closed the highway for several hours that I will need to travel on this weekend to get to South Carolina. The flooding in our area was not too extreme, but our basement flooded a bit and all of our waterfront river parks were under water.

Blessings, Dawn