Dance placements

You may have seen the waiting mailbox post a few days ago. The days before and after dance placements for the coming year are recieved are very stressful. We love our studio and all the teachers and know that they do their best with placements and have the best interests of all the dancers in mind. The follow-up 'what teams are your girls on?' and 'can we carpool?' phone calls are at a frenzy for a couple days.

This is going to be a great year for the Berridge girls, although it might be a bit hard on Emily. Emily has been dancing for longer than Maggie has been alive. She takes it very seriously and has worked hard to improve herself in all disciplines over the years. She got great placements on 3 small groups - tap, jazz and ballet, and then large groups and lines also in tap, jazz, hip-hop and lyrical and will also be in the production number.
It was a bit difficult for her to see the dances her little sister was offered. Small groups again in tap and jazz, with a ballet added. The large groups to go with those as well, along with hip-hop and production. And here's the hard part...Maggie was offered a tap trio and solo. We are very excited for her, but it did take a couple days for Emily to come to terms with the hard facts, summed up beautifully by Aunt Stacey "Cute always trumps hard work."

Projects

In an attempt to justify the large amount of scrapbook supplies I have in my basement, I occasionally whip up some sort of crafty home decor item.


Check out the sign and memo board I made for the kitchen up at the lake.


The words for the sign are courtesy of my friend Cara.

And the memo board was a kit, but it came with some dark black and red papers. I replaced with the fun, bright colors to go with the kitchen.

Contest!!

Ok faithful readers (both of you!) , here's my chance to actually give something back to those of you who follow along with my goofy life.

Rick and I walked around the lake Saturday morning.
At one point, in the middle of the road, we come across a spread out pile of poo with about a 10 foot trail of toilet paper streaming from one of the 'nuggets'.
We were cracking up and for the life of both of us could not come up with a plausible story for how it got there.

We finished our walk and told Em and her friend about it. Of course they wanted to see. So I grabbed my camera and we drove back.
Someone had cleaned it up by the time we got there so you'll have to use mental pictures to inspire you. The contest is simple. Come up with the best story of how that little tableau appeared in the road. You have until Friday, August 1. Keep it family friendly, as the favorite will be chosen by majority vote of Rick, Em, Maggie and myself.
Winner gets a custom made, refillable journal hand made by yours truly.

Cue Tom Petty

Emily thought dance team placements for next year were supposed to be here by last weekend. I thought they were supposed to be mailed by the weekend. Either way, she'll probably be out there every half hour this afternoon.

The waiting is the hardest part...

Sold!

She's been good to us for the brief year that we spent together, but we have a new relationship now. We've moved on to bigger and better. But don't worry, we've found a family to step into our shoes. It's a lovely couple from Grand Haven who will take her away for nice weekends and appreciate her for who she is.

Buh bye little Jayco.

Now to decide how to spend the money...

In the market for a camper?

http://grandrapids.craigslist.org/rvs/759442830.html

Where have we been?

At the lake, of course!

We had a fabulous 4th of July weekend with our friends, despite some plumbing issues.
Jay was incredible and probably saved us a couple hundred dollars in potential holiday weekend plumbing fees.
I've reserved a copy of The Complete Guide to Mobile Home Repair at our library so we'll be prepared for the next crisis.

This week is dance auditions. A gruelling two weeks will follow, with the girls running to the mailbox each day to see if their team placements have arrived. At least Emily has camp for the first week, so her mind will be otherwise occupied.