Maycember 2023 Part 2: Rachel's Dance Recitals

Rachel's third year of competitive team dancing wrapped up in May. By this point, she can put on her own mascara and lipstick, which is really awesome for me! 

May brought recitals--her Company Showcase (all the competitive team dances) and her Spring Recital (all her classes had a dance choreographed for this one--tap, hip hop, ballroom, and jazz). 

The boys were good sports (mostly!) about the weeknight trips to Taylorsville for these recitals. 

I love watching them make a big deal about her after her recitals. 

She had two performances at each recital, so the trick was keeping her fed so she'd have energy to dance. We had to check her out of school early to get to her recital. 

Hip Hop Class Dance:  

Jazz Class Dance: 

Tap costume (or was it ballroom?)  

Here's Rachel with her school bestie Maelynn, whose sister also dances at Rachel's studio. 

We're so proud of our tiny dancer! As a quick recap of her season, she learned 4 dances for her competitions (3 team dances plus 1 solo dance), 4 dances for her recital (hip-hop, jazz, tap, ballroom), one tap dance for the Jazzy Nutcracker in December, and one dance for her ballet recital. That's 10 dances! She has grown so much in this last year, and we love watching her! 
 

Maycember 2023 Part 1: Soccer and Flag Football

Maycember: Where you are as busy as in December, but you don't get presents at the end. 

May hit and we were off and running. Truthfully, Maycember started in April, but we've already covered that. 

Saturdays found us outside, finishing up Gabe's soccer season. He did great! 

We also spent a lot of time at Pleasant Grove Junior High watching Flag Football games. This was Gabe's first season, and technically Michael's second, though he doesn't remember much about his first season back in 2016. Gabe was on the Saints team. They did okay. 

Michael was on the Vikings team made up of kids from all over Northern Utah County. His coach was from Saratoga, they had practices in Lehi, and games in Pleasant Grove. They were a collection of kids who had never played together before (unlike many of the established teams), and they did really well! They almost beat the team that ended up winning the championship during playoffs (we're still mad about it--a bad call at the last minute). They also came really close to beating the undefeated Broncos which had several of Michael's friends on it. 

We really loved watching Michael's games; they were really fun! We even got Nana into them and she loved them! 

Somehow, we didn't have to skip too many soccer games to make football work. On Thursdays, Gabe had football practice in Cedar Hills, Michael had practice in Lehi. Both fields were 15 minutes from our house, but in opposite directions of each other), and both practices ended at the same time. Right after we picked them up, we needed to go pick up Rachel from dance.  We felt like we lived in our car after school in May just running all of our kids to their things! 

We're so proud of our boys. They worked so hard and learned so much!!