Christmas Around the World 2011

Last weekend, we went to watch Kristina dance in Christmas Around the World.  She was amazing dancing the Polish and Russian dances.  I loved the scarf dance and all of the beautiful costumes!  The Polish costume has really thick material like the native Polish dancers wore (since all of the costumes are authentic to the countries).  My other favorite were the dances from Mexico--it brought me back to watching the dancers in Cancun last year do very similar dances while we were there last spring.  There also was a group invited to perform folk dances from Africa which were really amazing. Knowing now that this will be her last time performing in Christmas Around the World, we're especially grateful that we went over to see her dance in this incredible show.

We enjoyed having the family all come to see her perform and one of my good friends, Analane, who has been a supporter of Kristina's dancing come, too!  We went out to dinner afterwards to Terra Mia, which I had wanted to try, and the food was delicious and was served very quickly for such a large group--they even had gelato which the kids loved.

Another highlight of the weekend was getting to see friends of ours which we hadn't seen since we lived in Texas (the Janis') and catching up on our lives again and friendship.  I'm so glad we'll be able to see more of each other in the future!

Beautiful set decorated for the holidays

Congratulations hug from her cousins & sister

Polish costume

Always on the go, never can catch Matthew for a picture

Homecoming Trip

In October, I organized a group of Colorado Cougar fans to go cheer on the Cougars at the game against San Jose State.  It was a really fun weekend, but it didn't get off to a good start.  Our flight was delayed 6 hours and we finally left the Denver just before midnight.  We were really tired and a little cranky, but we got 2 good things out of it--seeing our good friend, Jamie Dunn, who we hadn't seen since we lived in Texas, and $100 vouchers.

Friday night we took some of Kristina's college friends out for pizza, and then we went to see the Homecoming Spectacular.  A terrific show with lots of the different performing groups--even the guest artist, Brian Stokes Mitchell--was impressed with BYU's talented performing groups.

Saturday, we went to the Homecoming Parade.  While we waited for the parade to start, we were hanging around with the folk dance team.  They had the music cranked up and were dancing some Israeli dances and it really was a PARTY.  We were glad Kristina is part of a fun group like that.  We started out getting ready to watch her from one place in the parade, but she was dancing on the opposite side, so we followed the parade.  We could hardly keep up with them as they ran between each stop (in character shoes!)

That afternoon, I had arranged a tour of the new broadcast facility which truly is amazing!  We saw the radio and website developers floor this time and the thousands of CD's of classical music they have for the Classical radio channel.

Katherine was a little nervous to stand next to a llama.

Most of the SPAC folk dance team

It was a chilly, misty day, but made for a cool "Y" picture!

Cougar Marching Band 

Cosmo

That night it was pretty chilly and an 8:15 pm game time start so we didn't make it for the whole game, but the highlight was getting to go on the field and shoot the cannon!  It was hard to pull, but finally it went off on the 3rd try.  So cool!  We even got a t-shirt that said, I shot George Q, and a picture with Cosmo!

BYU International Folkdance Ensemble

This week the BYU International Folkdance Ensemble came to perform in Denver. It is the biggest event that I have ever organized. From finding a venue, to marketing, tickets and finding host families for all of the dancers, band, and crew, there was a lot involved.

I also planned for them to do a short performance in return for lunch at Katherine's elementary school. It was interesting because the principal thought they might try to preach or something and was initially very reluctant to have them perform. She really did enjoy the show though.

One of the interesting things that happened was that the team performed the night before at Longmont and the floors were so dirty, they got the men's white costumes for one of the dances all dirty and they had to wash the white costumes for the show that night. I wasn't expecing to have the director at my house using my washing machine! All of the dirt came out and I got to know him a little better, too.

I was nervous I wouldn't be able to get enough tickets sold to cover our costs, but we had a full house and the show was amazing! One of the best things was seeing all of the audience with such happy faces during & after the show. "Priceless" as Bryan said after the show.

We had 4 dancers at our house and it was so fun. Katie (one of Kristina's former folkdance counsellors, Brian, Teesha & Lindsay. We didn't want the show or their short visit to end!