Modest dancewear AND dance moves!

(Not my daughter)

My daughter, who is about to turn 14, has been in dance since she was 5. The photo above is exactly like one costume she has had in the past, but it is one of the more modest ones. Thankfully, being in ballet, she hasn't had to worry too much about really inappropriate costumes, but we never know what they look like until close to recital, so we always worry at least a little!

Another costume (see more pictures here at this link) was worn for her 2nd year in dance and her first year to be in "big girl ballet"! She was allowed to go into the older class early for a trial period, and she did great and stayed in it! I didn't like the 2 photos the "professional" took of her, so I took some myself on our front porch with a black sheet behind her. I forgot to take the date stamp off though, so I later had to edit them out. I was pretty happy with them, even though we didn't have her hair piece.

Jayla has always been modest, partly taught and partly just her nature. She's sometimes extreme about it, but I'd rather her go that direction than the opposite! Modesty, even for boys, is something we've always felt strongly about, but our children are just modest, so it's not like we're hovering over them saying, "You can't wear that." or "Go cover that up right now!" Nope. I honestly don't remember EVER having to tell my kids to go change clothes, probably because the ONLY clothes we have in the house are modest. Makes it easy!

Back to my pointe (did ya catch that play on words?)......

This was her first year in pointe. She has always dreamed about being a pointe dancer, and she's loved every minute of it. But she may not be able to continue. Wanna know why? Because we cannot find a single dance studio that does NOT teach the girls (and boys, but they are few) to SHAKE THEIR STUFF!!!! Seriously, it's disgusting, not the girls themselves, they've been taught this and don't know better, but by the teachers and parents who should know better! Honestly, some don't care, and others won't step up and say anything. Jayla took tap this year for the first time since she was 5 (a ballet/tap combo class), and the girls shake their hips/butts and shimmy many times. While many of the costumes could have been more modest, they were much better than a lot of costumes I've seen through the years, but it's the costumes AND "dance moves" that will keep her from being in tap again next year, and possibly out of dance altogether. And I'm sad about that because I know how much she LOVES pointe, but we won't compromise. Who knows what kinds of creeps are sitting in the audience looking at all these beautiful LITTLE GIRLS showing off their bodies? And all the boys in the audience, mostly brothers of the dancers, sure don't need to lose their innocence! Why can't their be something more modest all around?!?

For this very reason, Myles and our boys didn't get to go see her dance. I don't think the older boys wanted to go anyway, and I got her on video if they want to just watch the 3 dances she was in, but it's very sad that we don't feel comfortable going to our own daughter's dance recital. I was so embarrassed for those girls, from ages 3 up to 17 or so! Awful.

Well, guess what. There are not very many modest dance studios/schools around, but they do exist! Jayla was able to attend a dance studio where the owner's mother sewed ALL the costumes every year, and they were BEAUTIFUL AND MODEST! And they also made a point to not do any kind of suggestive or compromising "dance moves", and while it may seem silly to some, she even called "hip hop" "hop hop" because they don't shake their hips. I loved it! But then we moved too far away. :( When we did move closer about 2 years ago, she was going to go back there again, but the owner and family moved out of state! SO SAD!!!! Here's an example of her incredible recitals (we saw several of them through the years)! She had a theme (of course), and a variety of tempos, etc. This is one Jayla was in (below). (I know it's hard to tell because of the quality, but she was wearing pink and was one of the smaller girls.)

So, she is going to try to start something up herself, probably as a homeschool co-op class to start out, but she does want to teach/own her own dance studio one day. She's even talked about having dance classes for special needs children of all kinds! I think that is such a great idea! She has a big heart!

We'd love to hear any feedback, agree or disagree, dos and don'ts. There are so many things we want to do but don't know where to start!

I'll leave you with one more video. Jayla is front and center. She taught all these kids this dance at Sukkot (except her older brother in the back) when she was just 11 years old! It's something she loves, and you can see it in her face. :) She's about to turn 14, so this was almost 3 years ago. She really wants to teach regularly!

Lego club at dance class!

My three boys (on the right....baby was crawling around somewhere) were told to stay on the blanket with the Legos. Then other kids came and were welcome to play too, so they got a little strung out, but not bad. I have to entertain 4 boys for an hour while their sister is in dance class, so this is perfect. They are never ready to leave after an hour! Incidentally, the other kids aren't either. Hehe!

Jack the singing boy

I just had to record this somewhere before I forget!

Ever since I can remember, Jack has always loved singing and has always had good pitch. He would always sing with "Twinkle" when I'd sing to him and loved the praise and worship songs we'd sing with the church. He has always hummed with the vacuum cleaner too, and is always right in tune!

To the tune of "Twinkle", he would sing, "Bah bah dah dah bah bah dah, Bah bah dah dah bah bah dah, Bah bah dah dah bah bah dah, Bah bah dah dah bah bah dah, Bah bah dah dah bah bah dah, Bah bah dah dah bah bah dah." And he was right on key with every note. :) He actually still sings it this way at age 3 1/2 and has been for probably close to two years now!

Another of his favorites he's been singing for a few months is Audio Adrenaline's "Big House". The first line of the chorus is "It's a big, big house with lots and lots of room." Jack's version is "Bee bee ow, ah-la-la-la." Here's a video of him singing it a few months ago.

The song at the end of this video is from a kids' show. He still sings this one as well but will throw in other words from time to time, such as "Real good Daddy of mine!" or "Real good toy of mine!" He is just very cute. :)
One more he likes to sing is "Monster" by Skillet (weird song.....kinda scares me). He sings this one very consistently with these words, "I.....I ab-ba-ba-ba-bay!" That is supposed to be "I.....I feel like a monster!"
"I'm Not Cool" by Scott Krippayne is another favorite of all the kids. He sings this one, "Coo coo coo, wa wa wa" (repeat).
I'm noticing as he gets older that he still very much LOVES to sing, but he is more shy now. He won't sing for an audience at all, even family. If we ask him to sing something, he'll tell us no, but then if we seem to ignore him for a few minutes he'll usually sing it shortly after that since the song gets in his head. Hehe! He's so silly though! If you catch him in the right mood, you might just get a rare performance out of him! He likes to dance to music and will sometimes sing in funny voices!
Jack-Jack is such a fun little guy to be around. He will go far. :)

Jayla's dance recital

Jayla's dance recital went very well! I am hoping to have more pictures and video (DVD quatlity!) soon, so I will post more when I get them. In the picture above, she is 4th from the right in the front (click to enlarge).

Jayla's dance studio pictures

These are her professional pictures taken at the dance studio the same day I took my own photos of her. :) This package, 2-5X7's and 1 group picture, was $10. I didn't think that was too bad and was glad they offered something for that little since our money tree is not producing these days! I like them okay and I'm definitely glad for the group picture, but I'm glad I didn't order any more. I kind of like my own shots better! But these are standing up, and with a white background, so that's cool. :)

(The quality of the prints is much better than what you see here because I do not have a scanner!)

My sweet little ballerina princess!

Today was picture day at dance class, so I had to take a few of my own! I forgot to change the setting on the camera, so all of these have the dates on them! Grrr! I was able to crop out some of them, at least. Let me know which one is your fav and suggest other ways I could modify it!

Week in review

I don't have many pictures from this week, but we've been busy!

Monday Myles went to the biweekly (turning into weekly, lately) Bible study with the men in the church. We all just stayed home and did some cleaning and played computer games.

Tuesday was dance and scouts. Nothing exciting, really.

Wednesday afternoon I went out with Chrysinda. We picked up another friend and went out to dinner at this great Asian noodle place! It's cheap and good, so we love the place! Afterward we went to the Bible study with the group from the retreat last weekend. We didn't leave there until nearly 11:00!!! During that time the kids went to AWANA.

Thursday had a lot going on! Myles usually gets home early in the afternoon, so an hour or so later, I went to the grocery store to get some grape juice for the Lord's Supper/Passover we were invited to that night. As soon as I walked outside I noticed a huge cloud of black smoke, and it looked very close to our house. Thankfully it wasn't blowing in our direction, but we were having wind gusts up to 50 mph that day, and it was SO DRY! I pulled out of our neighborhood only to come up on bumper to bumper traffic at the stop sign. Just half a mile from our house was a fire! I could see it! The flames were huge and right at the corner of the main intersection!

As Jayla and I left a little while later, we went to the corner again, thinking they might block off the road to prevent us from getting all the way to the corner. Myles had already taken the boys to watch the fire, and apparently everyone had the same idea. There were probably 50 cars parked in the empty lot right on the corner, and just on the other side of the street were huge flames, high above the trees! As quickly as I had pulled in and found Myles, I was being told to leave in fear that the flames were about to "jump" on our side.

We drove on to meet my friend Mandie to follow her to her SIL's house where the feast was being held. On our way there we nearly got stuck and/or turned around because of more fires. It was so sad. We saw people trying to get to their homes but being turned away by the police who were closing the roads. On those roads we saw people coming out of the neighborhoods with trailors all loaded up with whatever they could salvage in a few minutes. Later we saw on the news houses burning to the ground. Nothing was left, and just as one house would become totally engulfed in flames, the one next to it would catch. Every so often one house would get skipped. It was odd and all very sad.

Once it was all said and done (very late into the night) I think over 100 homes state-wide were completely lost, but I don't think anyone was killed! Praise God! There were some injuries, including firefighters, but no fatalities. One more house caught on fire Friday morning, but by then the wind was nearly calm and they were able to get it out with no more spreading or fatalities.

The Lord's supper/Passover was so fun! I enjoyed meeting several new people. There were over 30 people who attended the meal. The front of the haggadah we used was titled "The Order of the Lord's Supper, a Passover Narration". The group was mostly made up of non-Jewish Christians who were not celebrating for legalistic reasons (because they HAD to), but they wanted to honor Jesus as the Messiah, and Jesus was emphasized as the Messiah throughout the entire meal! It was very cool. There was shouting of praises and Hallelujahs and songs! I actually sat directly across from an Orthodox Jew, so I got to listen in as he talked with the man next to him about how this dinner differed from the Orthodox Jewish Passover. He would also say all the prayers in Hebrew before we said them in English. It was neat! I really did have a great time of worship and fellowship with other believers. Jayla came with me and was so excited the whole time. Jonathan chose not to come because he didn't want to be forced to eat celery. HA! They actually didn't use celery, so he missed out on all the other great food (and lots of it!) and tons of grape juice (which he LOVES), so he may change his mind if we do this again next year. We ended up leaving right after the meal. We were so stuffed! I think it was after 10 by this point, so we skipped the last part of the "order" of the meal. Others left early too, mostly those with children.

Friday evening we attended a going away party for a former pastor and his family. They are about to leave to be missionaries in another country! It seemed like a family reunion since we hadn't seen many of them in a while, and it was cool to see how all the kids have grown and changed. :) On our way there we drove past some firefighters who were still spraying down the trees and underbrush that had already burned. Here it was 24 hours after the fires started and it was still pretty smoky. Actually, by the time we went home we saw some more glow in a couple of areas, so apparently there were more flareups. Also the house we were at was very close to the fire. The pasture back behind the house was all burned, and a couple of houses further down the street were burned.

Today the smoke is all gone and it is not windy today either, so hopefully this set of fires is all done. I took Jack for his MRI this morning. It went well. It was kind of scary, even though I knew it was standard procedure and he'd be fine. Just watching them put him to sleep, seeing him struggle for a few seconds, then I had to kiss him good-bye and leave. :( They gave him a drip to keep him asleep. It took about 45 minutes or so and they called me back in. He was restless for a while, but by the time we got home he was asleep again and now is doing better. They said not to let him walk around today though because he could just fall over! :) So he is resting/sleeping and just hanging out in bed with Daddy today. I think I'll take a nap with him later. I didn't realize 7:00 came twice a day! :)

On our way home I drove through the fire area. It was so fascinating to see how it skipped all around the houses! I wish I could see an areal photo of the area just to see the pattern it took. I'm sure people had their hoses out and firefighters did such a great job keeping it away from houses. I'm sure they were exhausted having to fight against the wind for so long! The fire marshal said the fire was intentionally set, but they weren't sure if it was done in malice or not. At least they know who the criminals are, and I am so glad to know that no one was killed!

That's the update for this week, I guess. For the rest of the day we plan to hang out here at the house and maybe go shopping in a while. Tomorrow is Easter, so we're looking forward to a great worship time with our fellow brothers and sisters in the faith! :)

Jayla's new dance costume!

It's so pretty! (The black is not part of the costume!) I'm so glad she got something girly-girl this year! But that's a given I guess since she is in a ballet class. Last year she was in the little girl ballet/tap combo and their class was the tin man. You can't do a whole lot with that. I thought it was cute and creative and she liked wearing it to play in (after the recital), but compared to the other costumes, none of us were thrilled with it. It was also in three pieces! This year it is all one piece! :) I especially love the color! I thought the peach sections were going to be flesh colored, but I guess they got to choose and decided on peach!

Jayla's costume for dance!

The dance studio does a three part recital. The first part is the ballet, and it is a real ballet where they go through the whole story and songs. Last year was the Wizard of Oz. It was so cute!

The ballet this year will be Cinderella, and since she is in the "big girl" ballet class and not the ballet/tap class like last year, she will ONLY be in the first part of the recital! Yea!!! :)

Anyway, here are all the costumes just for the ballet portion. Jayla is in Ballet I, so she will be the Cinderella with the longer skirt (the last picture).

Jayla's Ballet I class

They are working on their routine for the recital in June! Jayla is the teeny tiny one in the back row wearing the blue and the dark pants. She keeps turning the wrong direction the 2nd time, but otherwise she is getting it down! They still have a lot more to add to it though! Fun times! :)