Keep On Dancing

If I'm going to spend an entire weekend living and breathing dance recitals, I'm sure as heck going to squeeze at least two blog posts out of the adventure. So, prepare thyself.

First, there's the issue of Alexis and her ass-kicking. I have no photos of that child in any of her performances or costumes or anything mostly because she is officially old enough to not like all of her costumes. Maybe that's a law of averages thing? She has like seven costumes this year, so I suppose there is bound to be at least one that she would prefer not to have. Regardless, she isn't standing still for photos, which is fine. You will have to take my word for it that she looked and was amazing.

The one thing that stood out about her recital was that a looooot of the kids on her team had solos during the recital. The only people who performed solos at the recital this year were the seniors, so YIKES. Alexis' very best dance friend is graduating this year as well as several of the girls she is closest to, so this is going to be an interesting transition summer. She has -loved- her team this year. Hopefully next year will be the same, even if it is with several new people.

The fact that we're already thinking about next year is quite the thing, isn't it? Or maybe I'm alone in realizing that?

THAT is a thing that always stands out for me. If I'm surrounded by parents who are watching kids Mila's age dancing, I'll hear a ton of discussion about the future. There's always comments like, "That's my future Broadway dancer!" or "I can't wait for my daughter and her best friend to have a duet when they're in high school" and "She's going to be dancing like that some day!" referring to a 6-year old eventually dancing like one of the high school kids. There is so much optimism and joy and it's great.

Truly.

I love the "anything is possible" part of parenting.

But! Data! I love data, too!

The data says that while there are literally 1000+ dancers at the girls' studio, the number of graduating seniors this year is about 12. TOTAL. So while there are hundreds of girls Mila's age, historical data indicates that most of them will quit at some point. (My money says Mila will stop, but I wouldn't put a lot of money on that because the child does things just to prove me wrong almost daily. So.)

As an observer of these things, I know the majority stop between 6th and 9th grade. As in, they drop like flies once middle school starts. Each year brings another wave of dancers bailing. Which is fine, of course. It's totally fine. HOOBOY, I bet there are a lot of disappointed wannabe dance moms when it happens, but good for those kids for figuring out what they are and are not passionate about.

But Alexis has full intentions of continuing, and that's quite a thing. She said when she was five years old that she wanted to dance forever, and so far she is making good on that dream.

Glimmers of Rainbows

COVID may be a torrential downpour of suck, but even torrential downpours have glimmers of rainbows. The most recent glimmer of a rainbow for me was OMG DANCE RECITALS DURING A PANDEMIC WEEEEE!

Yeah, so, we're sort of returning to normal-ish? Kind of? The girls' dance studio made plans for an adapted recital weekend months and months ago. For a long time, it looked kind of iffy, but then in the past month it became clear that their plan was going to work out. They have over 1000 dancers total, so instead of having 8-10 very long recitals, they planned for 20+ short recitals. Each recital was around 45 minutes long and each kid was generally in just one recital.

Except for the competition teams, of course. There was one competition team performance in every recital, so Alexis was in like four total recitals or something like that. Still, IT WAS SO BEAUTIFUL. In a normal year, she would have been in EVERY SINGLE ONE. Multiple times. In fact, the only way to see all of her dances would have been to attend at least three recitals, but not this year! They ran through all of her team's dances in one show! The other appearances were more like encores and I definitely do not have to watch those.

More beautiful, however, was that both of Mila's dances were pressed together in to one short recital. In a normal year, I would have had to sit through four hours of dancing to see her perform twice and then participate in the awards thing at the end. Four. Hours. I will take 45 minutes over four hours any day of the week.

So, uh, thanks COVID? I guess?

Also ... crowd restrictions. I had no idea how much limiting the number of people allowed to watch a performance could improve the entire situation. Each dancer had four tickets, so it wasn't like nobody was allowed, but not letting huge extended families take up multiple rows of seats made everything so much better. Those extended families tend to talk through the whole four hours of recital, except for the five minutes the kid they know is dancing, so basically I turn violent every year. But not this year!

And now begins my campaign to keep smaller recitals around forever. I'm sure they are a ton of work, but so are the long ones, so let's keep things short and sweet. Please? Maybe?

Baked Strawberry Donuts

Hi.

Donuts. That's all I have to say. Donuts.

BOO-TO-THE-YAH.

All donuts are good donuts, though I admit to strongly favoring Boston Creme. I haven't quite put forth the effort to learn how to make them, so instead I get by with baked donuts. All of the baked donuts.

But especially strawberry.

They are absolutely a good choice.

(Though, like I said, there are no bad choices when it comes to donuts.)

Baked Strawberry Donuts (Makes about 6 donuts)

1/2 cup sifted flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 large egg
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup strawberry yogurt
2 tablespoons butter, melted
1/2 cup finely chopped strawberries

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

2. Spray a donut pan with nonstick spray.

3. Dry stuff goes in a bowl. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, and baking soda, and you'll be doing just fine.

4. In a separate bowl, stir the egg, sugar, milk, vanilla, and yogurt until well blended. Then add the melted butter and stir some more.

5. Fold in the strawberries. Note: if you want to prevent the strawberries from creating little pockets of moisture in your donuts, toss them in a baggie filled with flour and shake to lightly coat them before adding them to your dough. I didn't bother because I have no patience for these sorts of things.

6. Place the donut batter into your pan. You should fill each hole about 2/3 full.

7. Bake at 350 degrees for 11-14 minutes. They're done when you can poke one with a toothpick and it comes out clean.

8. I like these just fine without frosting, but if you want to frost them, a simple glaze works really well.

9. Allow the donuts to cool for a minute or two in the pan then transfer them to a cooling rack. Eat one before they cool off completely, though. It's there in the instructions, so you HAVE to do it.