Trail 5K

On a cool, wet Saturday in early May, Natalie and I participated in our first ever Trail 5K race! It was put on by my friend Maya's horse rescue, Hope's Legacy, on the farm where they keep all of their rescues. Since Natalie and I have been walking so much, and we do occasionally add in some running, we thought we would tackle it! Plus, the money all went to a very good cause.

All 4 of us actually signed up, but when the morning of the race was wet and muddy the boys backed out of going. So Natalie and I put on our layers, packed another set of socks and shoes (as we knew our feet would get wet), and headed out to Afton for the event!

It was drizzling on and off as we arrived, and we definitely had to be careful of some muddy parts on the trail. But we had a great time looping around the farm, and made decent time. Was it my fastest? No. But there were a lot of hills, it was quite slippery, and I couldn't run the whole thing. Natalie actually beat my final time by about 10 seconds, as she put on speed at the end in order to beat me. Ha!

 

We were both very proud of ourselves for doing something new like this!

After the race, they posted photos on FB and I found one decent one of each of us.

Look, she's out in front of me here, too!

Afterwards, we changed out of our wet shoes into the rain boots we brought, and went around to meet some of the horses, check out the vendors who attended, etc. Natalie loved getting to pet the donkeys, horses, and even mini horses. In fact, she fed a treat to a mini horse who Maya said had not let anyone get that close before! My girl loves animals, just like her mom.

Contemporary on the floor

After Natalie's summer dance classes were over (they have a 6 week session prior to the 3 week intensive that she is currently 2/3 of the way through), Charlottesville Ballet sent us parents whose daughters were in the summer contemporary class a video of one of the floor routines they were working on. It's a bit repetitive, as they were really practicing getting the motions correct going both left and right across the floor. So, I cut it down to show just the movement, as I thought it was really love especially with the music.

As I said, Natalie has spent the past two weeks in a 7 hour a day dance intensive, and I know at the show this Friday they're going to show us multiple pieces, including a contemporary, that they've learned. I'm really looking forward to seeing it!

Cinderella: On Stage

In my previous post I shared photos of Natalie and her friends backstage at Cinderella; this post are my favorite photos I took of her on stage during the dress rehearsal.

Leaping elves and fairies!

Now is when the elves warn Cinderella that midnight is approaching...

And at the end of the ballet, I captured these more close-up shots of my girl. Her placement on stage was perfect! (I was trying to stay out of the way as I took my shots)

What a beautiful finale to a beautiful show!

Backstage at Cinderella

Natalie's first big performance with Charlottesville Ballet was in March 2019. She had auditioned for a role in January, and got one of the 40 spots that over 70 girls auditioned for! We were so proud of her, especially for being new to the school.

They performed Cinderella, which was choreographed by the head of the Southwest Ballet Company (including using his costumes and some of his male dancers for a few roles). The girls worked very hard for 3 months, as did the company members, and then gave two performances in Charlottesville and two the following weekend in Lynchburg. I volunteered backstage both weekends, which let me get a lot of fun backstage photos of the girls!

The Charlottesville performance was at the Paramount Theater on the Downtown Mall. We had about 24 girls plus a couple of parents wedged into this small dressing room for the show, but they did great!

They were excited by the mirrors lining the room in which they could get ready.

 

One of the coolest things at the Paramount is that through the backstage hallways, people who have taken part in performances have signed the walls. It's so cool to walk through and experience! Even cooler, is at only 11 years old, Natalie's name is now there!

 

In escorting them to/from the stage, I was able to grab a couple of photos with my phone from the sidelines.

 

You'll see Natalie appear in the video below with her fairy friend in blue.

Like I said, the following weekend we headed down to Lynchburg for two performances there. Natalie and I stayed in a lovely hotel on Friday night, after dress rehearsal, and had plenty of time on Saturday morning before we had to arrive at the theater to go for a nice walk! There's a beautiful walking path over the river, and it turns out there was a St Patrick's Day 5K that we inadvertently took part in.

I have a lot of photos from Lynchburg that I took from the sidelines but they didn't all come out that well; this is a collage of the 3 I took that I liked the most.

I did take a bunch of photos with my actual camera during dress rehearsal in Charlottesville; I have gotten those edited and will next post my favorite stage photos of my girl!

5th Grade Honors Choir

Late this winter, I received an email from Natalie's music teacher, inviting her to join the 5th grade all-county honors choir. There was an opening, and she thought Natalie had the dedication and musicality to be a part of the group. We didn't even know this was something she could do, so we happily accepted the honor.

The all county choir chorus was in March, so after the kids had spent the afternoon at Monticello HS practicing, we 3 went over to watch Natalie and the other 5th graders perform!

 

The kids were really fantastic. I didn't know all of the songs, as you can likely see from the program above, but I enjoyed all of them!

And I think it's now a requirement that every choir do this song...but the kids are so cute singing it, I can't even be bothered by the fact that it's a bit trite!

WCDE 2019

Dance, dance, dance! We just finished up the kids' first recitals with C'ville Ballet Academy, so I've definitely got dance on the brain. So many amazing photos to share! But before that, a couple of other dance activities Natalie participated in over the past few months, starting with an oldie but a goodie: WCDE!

Even though Natalie couldn't compete, since her new studio doesn't attend this conference, and she isn't dancing with LSB anymore, we could still go so she could take part in the workshops and cheer on her friends. I have to say, I was really proud of her this year - picking up choreography quickly has not always been easy for her, and they only have an hour per workshop to learn each dance. This year, she was exponentially faster at picking them up, and she had a really great time in each class!

She particularly has started enjoying hip-hop (I think she might actually take it at her studio next fall), and I was proud of her for asking for clarification from the instructor, who came out on the floor to show her.

He was a favorite of all of our dancers!

There was also jazz (another favorite) - she's in the blue pants.

And ballet!

And finally, the routine that got this song stuck in my head for AGES (I seriously do not know how many times we heard this portion over and over again). But it was one of her favorite routines, and she still talks about it every time we hear the song on the radio!

We got to stay in the hotel with friends, and I was so glad for both of us to spend the weekend with everyone.

 

Fun with friends from Leesburg

In February, we were fortunate to host three of Natalie's Leesburg friends! Her friends Bella and Bridgette came first, to join Natalie at a modern dance workshop at CBA and then to spend the night. The girls all agreed that the workshop was not exactly what they were looking for, but they were glad to have tried something different.

And of course, no sleepover with friends is now complete without some time in our hot tub!

Followed by movie and dog cuddle time on the couch!

Then, a couple of weekends later, we did a kid-swap with the Carlsons - Lily came to our house for the night, while Henry went to their house for a sleepover with Lily's brother Garrett. We had a lovely dinner out, and the girls stayed up late having lots of fun catch-up time in person.

What did I say above? Gotta have hot tub time!

And the boys had a blast too! Love this photo of them :)

Natalie's 11th birthday

As I mentioned in my previous post, we had a really big snow storm in December that kept us all in the house for a couple of days. The snow fall started on the day we were supposed to have Natalie's 11th birthday party, so sadly we had to cancel that, but luckily her friend Kendall from our neighborhood was able to walk over, play in the snow, and have cupcakes with us.

 

The week before, Natalie was given this lovely card signed by all of the dance teachers at her studio, many of whom she's never even had! What a nice thing to do for the students.

On Natalie's birthday, although it was a Monday and Evan and I had to work, we wanted to make sure that it was a super fun snow day!

So we bundled up early and headed out. How lovely is my family in the snow?!

As we anticipated, Lucy REALLY loved the snow. I had to keep dragging her back in to pull the snowballs off of her fur (see photo above). Plus I didn't want her paws to freeze!

Our house and yard was just so pretty. I loved as the sun started to come out.

 

By mid afternoon the plows had come through, we had a neighbor kid shovel us out (with his fantastic snow blower!), and we were able to leave the house for Natalie's birthday dinner. She chose Bonefish Grill as she wanted seafood, and they gave her a small box of chocolates and a gift card for later use! She was one happy camper.

And since there wasn't going to be any school the next day, and it was her birthday, we agreed to some evening hot tubbing in the snow! It really is fun; I'd never done that before moving here!

And afterwards, was time for birthday singing and cupcakes. A pretty great birthday all around, I would say!