Year End

Everything is slowly coming to an end. While school is not all finished in our house until June 30 the end is in sight. This weekend Olivia's Irish dance school had it's year end BBQ. Every family is required to do a certain number of volunteer hours for the school or forfeit the volunteer deposit, in this case $500! The volunteer deposit is required for many activities like soccer and basketball but it's usually $100. Since I had not fulfilled any hours yet I got stuck organizing the BBQ. Everyone told me it's easy - only about 40 people usually come. Of course, we got RSVP from 80+ people. Luckily it went very smoothly and thankfully the weather was great since moving 80+ people inside was going to be a disaster. No photos because I forgot my camera!

Olivia got to perform her 8-hand that she has been working on (this is an 8 person dance.) They did not get to perform it in competition because one girl injured her arm right before so this was their big debut. Ms Linda, her teacher, made a big deal of this being Olivia's last chance to perform it, which was nice for her to acknowledge Olivia specifically. The funniest part of the afternoon was the special dance presentation. Some of the Dads and older brothers got together with Ms Linda and learned their own "Riverdance". Apparently they only had 6 practice and they never had the whole group in attendance until the day of the show. Pretty impressive!! Too bad Frank couldn't join. Here's a link to the video on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXiSfypxaj0

And here's some REAL Irish dancing from Olivia's last Feis (I got in trouble for videotaping this!):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wf0OY_qveYY

And one more, for those of you who haven't seen this one. It's Olivia and Mirabelle dancing at a Chinese New Year party in Feb. Here she wears she class dress which is unique to her school and in the video above she wears her solo dress, only for solo dances at the novice level and higher.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KN345D2HpTg&NR=1

Are you all Irish-danced out now???