Spring Show

 Rebekah had a lovely show to wrap up the school year.  Rebekah was the Lilac Fairy and danced an excerpt from Sleeping Beauty. She also performed Peasant Pas from Giselle. Lastly, she performed two original contemporary pieces which were choregraphed by her teachers. They performed two shows back to back on Saturday. 

This concludes her school year with the Pre Professional Program she has been in this year. It was a crazy year with tons of outside drama that influenced the year. The directors of the program ended up filing for divorce in the middle of the year. Much of the year was much more disorganized and fly by the seat of your pants then we are used to. However, Rebekah feels that it was not a wasted year. She feels that the male director is the best teacher she ever had and she did end up getting many, many hours of one on one training from him because her class was so small and there were multiple injuries that the other students experienced during the year (so they were often present in class but forced to sit out). She feels like she needed that intense training to help catch up her ballet skills. 

We do not know for sure what the plan is for next school year. We are unsure if this program will even survive to exist next year and if she would want to stay even if it did. The performance quality (stage design, organization back stage, choreography) was much poorer quality than she is used to.  We are looking at another local program that she will audition for in August. Until then, she leaves in two weeks for her first of three summer intensives. The first one is two weeks long and we hope will be a wonderful learning opportunity. 

Blessings, 

Dawn

Mother's Day

I had a lovely Mother's Day. I think it may have been the best ever. Rebekah and I took my Mother to a bridge that has been converted into a really beautiful garden. The garden stretches over the bridge and down the sides and almost under the bridge. It was so sweet and lovely. We will have to go back again soon. 

It was filled with little gardens within the garden. This was in one of the children's gardens. 

The mirror, mirror on the wall area was very creative.  I also loved how they converted the old boat below into a darling garden. 

The doggie stick library was too cute. Dogs are welcome in the garden and they could get some fresh water and pick a stick to take home from this section. 

We somehow lost the picture of all three of us. which is such a disappointment. 

After our lovely walk through the garden, we went into the tiny town. We had lunch and then went to the "new" permanent carnival which is a collection of rides from the 1940's and 1950's. We were stunned to see the Merry-Go-Round that used to stand on the Museum Mall in downtown Washington, D.C. It is the very same Merry-Go-Round that I grew up riding on whenever we were in the city and had been right across the street from my father's work. We just had to go on it! 

It was such a thrill to go on something that I had grown up riding on. What a small world we live in! Who would have thought we would find something like this more than 500 miles from my childhood home?

We took my Mother home, then picked up my husband and sons. We wrapped up the day by attending a showing of Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore. It was a perfect day!

Blessings, Dawn

Goodbye, Birthday Month ... Hello, May

April flew by quickly. We celebrated three birthdays here. Elijah turned 20 this past week. He is doing really well. We are so pleased with what a nice young man he has become. He is popular at work and everyone always has nice things to say about him. He finds his job in fulfillment at Target challenging, interesting and a bit stressful right now because of the major renovation Target is going through. He is still working part time, but enough hours that he has a benefit package now. 

He also has a nice friend group which he plays with online and a group of teens and young adults that he does Belegarth Medieval Sports with each weekend. His savings is growing and he is learning more and more about managing his money. Now, if I could just convince him to learn to drive. That is a major goal this summer. 

My husband celebrated 15 years at the local Veterans Hospital on the same day as Elijah's birthday. He is a supervisor now of just over a dozen people. He finds the job a bit more stressful than he thought it would be and sometimes works six days a week right now to try and offset the major understaffed issues that his hospital has dealt with for years. The higher you go up the ladder just means the more jobs you seem to do. He still spends hours every day in addition to his new job duties doing his old job duties, because they are so understaffed. He is a very busy man. 

 

We shot confetti cannons at him. 

My mother also celebrated her birthday. She had her traditional Angel Food cake and we served her homemade Chicken and Dumplings. Then we played scrabble and Rebekah creamed us all. 

We started the month off with Tim's birthday, which I already wrote about in an earlier post. 

It was a very busy month between all of these lovely birthdays and celebrations and our family vacation. Now, if the pollen would just settle down so I could breathe and stop itching...LOL. There is much to do in May to prepare for summer. Rebekah will be away from home most of the summer. It is going to be a new experience for all of us. More on that later.

Blessings, Dawn