finding joy in the journey

Aubrey has been watching old home videos of Mikayla's dance recitals when she was 3 and just waiting for the day that she was old enough to start taking dance class. When September rolled around, I got her signed up and she was absolutely thrilled.....up until we got there. As you can see, her nerves got the best of her. Smile, Aubrey:

We sat together and watched the first class, but the following weeks she decided that she was going to "be brave" and just do it. Now she love, love, loves it. Her favorite part? Dancing with the scarves and blowing up a balloon with her class (below). The kids hold hands up close, then stretch out as far as they can. Miss Barbara choses a child to pick what color the balloon will be each time. As you can imagine with a class of 10 little girls, the "balloon" is always pink or purple. Not for my little Aubs, though. Her balloon was turquoise. Naturally. I just love that little bug.

Mikayla has done dance (loved it) and soccer (not so much), but over the summer she was really interested in tumbling, so I signed her up for a gymnastics class--and it turns out she's pretty good at it. Some of the pictures are blurry, because this not-always-prepared mom ended up using her phone to snap some shots.

The above picture is towards the end of a (very long) contest to see who could balance on the beam the longest while standing on their toes. I think the instructor had to finally call it a tie because Mikayla and the other girl could have gone forever!