First Time Ballerina

This past week, Carrie has been at ballet camp. One of my dear friends from high school, Caylan, just retired from being a professional ballerina and now is director of the Children's program at Nashville Ballet. Carrie has not started officially taking ballet, but I knew when she did, she would love it! So even though this camp is technically for ages 3-5, Caylan let Carrie do it which was SO exciting for Carrie. We have been talking about this week ever since we signed up several months ago so when it actually arrived, it was like Christmas for Carrie! We went last week and picked out our leotard and ballet skirt and ballet slippers and she was pumped! It was really fun for me as well because when you have a little girl, you so look forward to all the fun things like getting them all dressed for ballet. And I was even more excited that Carrie got to have "Miss Cheadle" as her teacher. So fun to have a sweet friend teach Carrie ballet. So when Monday rolled around, we were excited to start a fun week! I was a little nervous about Carrie since she would be the youngest and that it was 5 days straight which is a lot for her, but Caylan assured me she would be fine and I really think she did well!! I think it helped that this group had a lot of young ones so Caylan said they took it slow and by Wednesday, the little ones really understood the rules and were doing great. So I was glad to know Carrie was not a problem since she was a special exception :). Their days consisted of a ballet class, an adventure, a craft, snack time and ballet games. Every day I picked her up, she said she had a blast and that "Miss Cheadle was her favorite teacher!" It was cute and so fun for us to see her having such a ball. The last day of camp, they have a little "recital" or showing of what they worked on that week. We were to arrive 15 minutes early to watch it. Graham was so sad he could not make it, but Papa is in town this week so it was fun that he got to come! Even more fun that today is his 60th birthday! So it was a treat for all of us and having had boys, Papa had never gotten to do something like this before. So here are some pics and a couple little videos...

Carrie watching Miss Cheadle...she is mesmerized by her!

Ready to start!

The first video is the dance they worked on this week. It is hilarious. You can tell the older ones are really into it and know it really well and then you see Carrie and she is struggling with her puppet half the time and Miss Cheadle has to help her along the way, but she is having a blast and trying and that is what matters!!! (You can hear my friend Lauren and I talking haha).

This video is them doing their favorite ballet game "Freeze Dance"

At the end, a real Ballerina, the Sugar Plum Fairy from Nutcracker, came out and gave them all backstage passes for the Nutcracker and snow globes. Carrie was SO excited about the snow globe!

With the Sugar Plum Fairy

And then she got her flowers! I do not think she had a clue why she got flowers, but she loved them!

With Papa on his special birthday!

And with Miss Cheadle! It was hard to get a good pic because she could not put the snow globe down!!

Another dear friend from highschool, Lauren, also came to watch. She and Caylan are great friends and since Carrie was in this week of camp, she thought it was a good week to go see what a great teacher Miss Cheadle is and to watch silly Carrie. Again, the snow globe hindered the picture.

Afterwards she got to go eat at Chick Fil A and now she is fast asleep...this week was SO fun, but it definitely wore her out! I am so glad we are going to do ballet from now on. She just loves it and I think this week was one of the best in her little life!!