Dance Works Studio

 Dance Works Studio

Spring Recital

2014

 

 

 

Eight months of dance came to an end this weekend with their two final performance at this years Spring Recital.  McKenna and Ally did an awesome job in this year's show.  The way the recital goes is performance style show, this style the kids are on and off the stage all night.  This gives each dancer several opportunities to take the stage throughout the evening. 

 

McKenna had four costume changes tonight, so it is always a huge rush back stage for her to go from one costume to another before she is back on stage.  McKenna danced with her Diamond competition team, her Jazz class, and her duet with Tiandra Taylor.  Her favorite performance is the 'Back in Time' dance that she does with her Diamond class.  McKenna just beams, she loves being on stage and you can see she just loves what she does, she definitely is a born to be performer.

 



 

Allyson looked so cute tonight as a little monkey with her Tiny Jazz class.  There is something fun about watching these little ones dance as they try and follow their teacher down in front.  This year's theme for dance was 'Under the Big Top', which entailed songs that talked about animals, clowns and different things you would experience at a circus.  The very opening number, one of the older girls was chosen to be the circus Ring Master with several other dances that represented animals ran through the crowd.  Well, Ally was chosen to be the monkey that ran through the crowd and then perform a simple dance on the stage to start the show.  She was a little hesitant at this because she told me she was too shy to do this.  Once I told her that there were lots of girls that would love to do this and I could tell her teacher that she wanted to back out, she quickly changed her mind and did such a cute job acting like a monkey up on stage. 

 

 

Another highlight for Ally was she was able to dance with her dad this year.  She had the opportunity last year, but she was the one that refused to do it.   But this year, there was no hesitation and so the both of them got up and danced so cute together.  It was priceless watching them both dance, you could see that they both loved dancing with each other. 

 

All their hard work paid off and both McKenna and Ally did great in this year's recital.  It already makes me excited for dance to start again this fall to watch them grow and prepare for next year's performance.  They truly love dancing and it definitely showed tonight in their performances.

Miss Gunnison

For the past several months, I have had the pleasure of working on the Miss Gunnison Valley pageant committee.  This has been an awesome experience, not only to work with such a great group of ladies in our valley, but to have the opportunity to get to know the seven beautiful girls that are running for the crown of Miss Gunnison 2014.  Not only has this been fun, but it has been such a great learning experience for all of us.  Months ago, the practices and workshops where held only every other week and then as the pageant has drawn closer, the practices have been one or even two a week. 

 

This week, I had the chance to take Allyson and Tyra to one of the pageant practices in the high school auditorium.  This was a great night to bring them because a couple other mom's had brought their kids to practice too, so my girls were able to make some new friends.  Allyson and her new friend Atley Coates, were instantaneous friends, they hit it off just like they had played before they met tonight.  Between Ally, Atley, and Tyra, there were several other girls that they all knew, like Macy and Averie Leake, that between all these girls, they all had a ball playing together. 

 

For a while, we hardly even knew they were there to practice with us.  They seemed to keep themselves pretty entertained while us mom's were helping out.  Before we knew it though, they had found a notebook and paper and decided that they wanted to go to each of the girls running for the peageant and get their autographs.  So lucky for us, we were able to catch these cute Kodak moments of these cute little girls with each of the contestants, getting their autographs.  These little girls were in heaven, seeing how sweet each of the contestants were with these little girls were priceless. 

 

Atley, Kaitlyn Hyatt, and Ally 

Tyra, Ally, Macy and Atley getting Lauren Christenson's autograph!

 



Kelcey Ellet signing for Allyson and Atley.

Kaitlyn Hyatt, Macy Leake, Atley Coates, Jenni Otten, and Allyson.

 

Macy, Madee Christenson, Atley, Allyson, and Tyra

Allyson and Atley showing off their irreplaceable papers with each of the Miss Gunnison contestants signature on.  Talk about two excited little girls!

 



Well the fun was not over with just autographs!  Once the contestants left to go home, we, the committee, stayed a while after to go over details and upcoming workshops.  We ended up getting all the entertainment that we needed when Ally and Atley started singing for us!  Yes, microphones and all, we heard a new rendition of 'Let it Go' and it was pretty cute.  I got home and showed Jeremy this picture, he wondered who of us on the pageant committee talked them into performing for us, really, these two did this all on their own!

 

Front L to R - Kelcey Ellett, Tayler Garff, Lauren Christenson, Jennie Otten. Back L to R - Carlie Fredrickson, Miss Gunnison 2013 McCall Grajek, Kaitlyn Hyatt, and Madee Christenson. 

 

I learned to love these girls, they were all so cute, polite and just genuine good girls.  I would have hated to been a judge, because each of these girls were great in all that they did.  There have been pageants in the past that I have worked on that you usually can pick the queen, but this pageant was different.  Each girl had strong talents and personable enough that it was hard just for us few that worked with these girls to be able to say who the new royalty would be for the upcoming year.  The pageant was held on May 3, 2014, and because I was in Lagoon at a dance competition with McKenna, we missed the final show.  The new 2014 royalty ended up being Lauren Christenson as 2nd Attendant, Jennie Otten as 1st Attendant, and Madee Christenson as Queen.   

Tyra's 3rd Birthday Presents

Mini Miss Princess Pageant

Allyson participated in the Mini Princess Pageant this year for the first time.  Her section included 19 girls from Kindergarten / 1st grade.   The week of the 14th is when the practices started and so each day was filled with lots of fun.  She just stayed after school and each day they went over walking, talent, and production number.  To top is off, each day the pageant directors gave something cute for the girls to each take home, Monday was a cute water bottle with a crown on it, Tuesday was a ice drop necklace and Wednesday was a really cute crystal like ring and their princess t shirt.

The pageant opened with the group of girls performing a really cute production number to the song, Let it Go.  While the music was still playing, each of the girls had the chance to stand in front at the microphone to introduce themselves.  Allyson was pretty cute, standing up there and announced her full name, Allyson Dawn Taylor, where most girls just said their first names.

 

After production number, they moved on to the on stage question section.  This gave the girls a chance to show off their personalities.  Ally's was pretty funny for the fact her first few questions were about animals.  And for those of you who don't know Ally, know she has a huge fear of animals, especially dogs and cats.  So for Hannah to ask her about our pets and which are her favorite was pretty comical.   Needless to say, did say she likes horses and our rabbit.  Pretty safe answer!

 

From there, it moved onto the talent portion.  With the theme of this year's pageant being 'FROZEN', Allyson decided that she wanted to perform a dance to the song, 'In Summer' from the movie Frozen.  This part of the pageant was optional, so luckily, McKenna spent some time and help Allyson make up a dance to have her perform the day of the pageant.  It was pretty cute when Allyson was dancing and got to the part that she was taught to stop and whoever was running the music backstage forgot to stop the music, so instead of just holding her pose, she just kept dancing, making it up as she went.

 

After the many girls got through their talents, they moved on to modeling.  This is where the girls could model any outfit, dress, costume of their choice.  Allyson decided that she wanted to wear her really cute flower dress, she particularly liked the parts of modeling to where she could twirl around.

 

The last section of the pageant was the crowning.  Each girl received a crown as well as awarded something positive about each of them.  Allyson was awarded for being such a sweet, happy girl.  This definitely fits her, she is always so sweet and happy to be around.  I love these pictures of her as she waits for her turn to be crowned, she looks so bashful!

 

 

The moment she had been waiting for all day, to get that pretty crown.  It was fun for the girls to have another pretty princess give them a crown.  Thanks to Madee Christenson for dressing up to make this more special for these little girls!

 

 

Our cute Princess Ally!

Some of Allyson's cute friends also participated in the pageant with her.

They are Raegan Holder, Linsi Hansen, and Shae King.

 

Shae and Ally

 

Lottie and Natalie Holder

Trey being King for a day!

 

Way to go Allyson, you did a great job in today's pageant. 



You will always be a princess in our eyes!

McKenna's 13th Birthday Presents

District Award of Merit

Today in sacrament meeting, President Bruce King stood up to the pulpit and asked that Jeremy come to the stand to be presented a Scouting award.  Neither one of us were aware of this award, so it was quite the surprise for him to be called up to receive this recognition. 

 

Jeremy received the District Award of Merit.

The Award of Merit is the highest award that is given to a Scouter at the District level.

 

 



 

Not only was Jeremy recognized during sacrament, but his picture with a nice article was on the front page of the local newspaper!  You are a great example of service and hard work for the scouts in our ward as well as your family.  Good Job!

SBO Campaign Week

Several days ago, McKenna came home from school and had decided that she wanted to campaign for a Student Body Officer for next year's school year.  The campaign was supposed to start on Monday, so with only a few days to prepare, we quickly went to work on getting her campaign material put together.  She decided quick that she wanted to use Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory as her theme for the posters and handouts.  We checked out different stuff online and came up with four different poster ideas.  On Friday, I took the our ideas to Shaylie at the Copy Station and she did an awesome job putting our ideas on paper!  McKenna was so excited on how cute these turned out and couldn't wait to get them hung up at school.

 

 

Monday morning rolled around and McKenna was up and ready to go to school at 6:50 am.  Her and Jeremy were there when the doors opened to get her posters hung up.  She had put a lot of thought in what poster would be best where and wanted to make sure she was there in time to get that spot.  I was able to grab this cute picture of her before she ran out the door.  We both decided that this candy bar looking poster was by far one of our favorite!

 

 

She hadn't been gone 20 minutes before she was running through the back door to grab the handouts that we had made for her to hang on everyones locker.  We printed, cut, and stuck magnets on 300 golden tickets on Sunday, as preparation for her campaign, thinking she could have them to place on lockers later in the week.  But she quickly grabbed them and ran them to school because her opponents were all doing lockers signs that same day!

 

On Tuesday, we spent the evening getting McKenna stocked and ready for the candy campaign day.  I found these cute, bright suckers at Family Dollar and thought that it would be fun to put a cute label on them.  The colors on the candy and label all went right along with the Willy Wonka theme.  By the time we were through, she had 300 suckers ready to go for the candy campaign day.



 

McKenna was up and off to school at 7:15.  It was fun to drive by the school this morning to see all the kids surrounding McKenna.  We drove by twice and both times she had groups of kids talking and hanging out with her.

 

 

After school on Wednesday, each student trying out for SBO was to stay after school to make a poster for a pretend school activity.  McKenna's by far was the very best, not only was her idea great, but the design of her poster turned out great.  This activity gave each of the kids a chance to design a poster without the help of parents.  There was one mom that showed up to help her daughter and the teacher over elections had to ask her to leave. 

 

 

Thursday was the take down poster day.  Allyson, Lottie and I showed up after school to help McKenna take down all of her campaign material.  This was fun to see all the creativity from the other kids campaigning for SBO.   The best part of picking up posters was to see the cute campaign managers help McKenna out.  These two have had a lot of fun this week being in the middle of it all! 

 

 

Friday morning was McKenna's last chance to campaign.  She was to school early and put out her 300 Oompa Oompa locker signs and what was left of her golden tickets.  

 

 

As soon as school started, everyone met in the lunchroom to hear each of the nine candidates give their election speech.  The nine students campaigning were Sydney Otten, Bethany Lister, Genna Grajeck, Kennady Hall, Dillon Nielson, Laini Reber, Tiandra Taylor, Jaden Jensen, and McKenna.

McKenna had so much fun preparing this and did a great job in tying it into her Willy Wonka theme.  She talked about how in the movie there were five random golden tickets placed in candy bars throughout the world, and she explained that in today's election, you will vote for five SBO officers or also to be described as golden tickets.  She went on to say how she wanted to be one of those five SBO golden tickets.  She did a great job and had a great response from the audience.

 

 

Later that night at the school dance was when the announcement was made to who the next year's student body officers would be.  She looked so cute and was super excited to hear the results. 

 

The results for SBO ended up being Genna Grajeck as president and the other four drawn in were Laini Reber, Tiandra Taylor, Jaden Jensen, and Dillon Nielson.  The votes only counted for the Student Body President the other four positions were drawn out of a hat.  Unfortunately, McKenna's name was not drawn out and as we understand, things happen for a reason.  I look at this experience for McKenna as a great learning curve.  She has grown so much from this experience.  I personally, have had so much fun working with her and coming up with all sorts of creative ideas to help her campaign.   Deep down I fought tears when I didn't hear her name called out, but she was so strong and handled the situation really well.  I am proud of her and how well she did, she makes a great example and leader to all those that surround her.

 

Now as we look back, we do understand that things happen for a reason.  That next week after that SBO stuff was over, each class voted for their individual class officers.  McKenna was voted as Vice President for 8th Grade class officer.  This will be a much better experience for her and she is very excited about who she gets to serve with as she serves 8th Grade class.