Day 3

SOOOOO proud today. These babies woke up incredibly excited. The first words E said to me were "I just told Katie I'm so excited to be a spider!!" They woke up in good time to have a leisurely breakfast then each bath and have their hair done to perfection. Katie's hair is fabulous, a "worm" bun with loose curls (natural!) and her beautiful new web-by tiara. 

We had to sit in traffic a while because of extra rush hour busyness, thanks to unexpected snow. We arrived in time to get them ready and run their dance. They both got a little nervous as I dropped them off to go backstage - Katie had to go through the backstage curtains to the opposite side wing and the lady who was taking her kept disappearing, and E was generally a bit butterfly-ish about it today. Despite that, when their turn came they did a very lovely job of it. It was not the absolute best I've seen it, but technically it was not far off. Their expressions were not what they can be, by quite a noticeable difference. But these girls were massively the smallest in this quite wide-range section. E was 6 two days ago, the girls who won and took second were all 8. Katie and E looked very very young compared to them, even though they'd looked a whole bunch older to us before they went on. It was so disappointing to them to not win anything, they'd worked incredibly hard on this. But I am so proud of Katie - they danced gorgeously (and I have it on DVD, her first ever duet!) and she stood there smile the whole way through the adjudicating even though they'd not won. She came up to me afterwards and put her head in my shoulder with a slight down turn of smile, but it was a totally reasonable amount of disappointment. Handled so well, particularly to say her & E are very used to placing in their sections. This dance has potential to be one they grow with and grows with them, its my favourite of her routines. And I am so proud of their costumes. Not even slightly as how proud I am of them. 

We popped into town to do a job before giving them lunch. We then headed round to see the school principal. The girls had a lovely time, showing off their beautiful hair and their medals (and they both have exactly the same 2 silver medals each for their respective sections, which was helpful). 

That's the end of Katie's entries to this festival, though its very unlikely to be the end of Katie's time at the festival! It has been wonderful to see her work, but also a very useful learning curve for TheGirl - she's moved up a ballet age group, there was a new girl in the Song & Dance, and it was their first duet. The lack of trophies this time was felt, commented on by them, but Katie has taken it really well and is determined to come back fighting in October. 

We are at our own home now, having dropped her medals off for engraving. So so so proud of my little ballerina. My extra photo had to be added because this is her face AFTER she didn't place. And that makes me so happy.