Teddy Bears Picnic

A few weeks back, on Father's day actually, Riley had her first ballet recital. To say that I was a proud parent is definitely an understatement. It made my heart swell to see my little ballerina on stage...hair, costume, makeup and all...very serious and performing her dance. She loves to dress up, loves to dance and in general loves to be a little girl.

They performed at the Mt Baker Theater and leading up to her recital, Riley kept exclaiming, "I get to dance on the stage at the Mountain Baker Theater!!!" (as a side note, one of the cuter things that Riley does is call Mt. Baker "Mountain Baker"...this started when Tyler took her skiing last winter) Anyway, she was thrilled at the idea of it and could hardly wait for her big performance.

My parents came up from Seattle and Tyler made us an awesome dinner of homemade bacon & onion hamburgers, homemade sweet potato fries, grilled veggies, green salad and i made this strawberry shortcake for dessert...everything turned out perfect and the dessert was seriously amazing. We had dinner, dessert then went to the show. Riley sat with us during the whole first half of the show as her class was the first act after intermission. It was at least an hour of sitting and she barely moved an inch. She was mesmerized by all the ballerinas and dancers. I was thoroughly enjoying myself as well - I always wished I was a dancer. I hear that the dance studio has classes for adults and that the adults can perform in the shows...watch out...you might just see Kari and I next year on stage dancing in our tutus!

Riley's class danced to The Teddy Bears Picnic song and when it was finally their turn and I got to see her perform it all felt worth it...the classes, the rehearsals, the amount of money I had to continually shell over for this performance...it was so fun and Riley was very proud of herself afterwards too. She did great on stage, although she had about a 10 second moment of completely zoning out and staring into the crowd. Other than that she was right on track and did her dance. We bought her a bouquet of pink carnations and gave them to her afterwards. It was a fun evening...something I know we will do again for years to come.