BYC Dance Company

Good morning!  It is currently 7:14 am, I got almost 6 hours of sleep last night, got up at 5 and made Jesse breakfast.  Since he left for work, I have chosen music for dance team auditions, created a secret facebook group, researched and written a liability form that is in accordance with Texas state laws, put what should be the finishing touches on a sponsor letter, and read over my calendar for the umpteenth time.  Wow, "umpteenth" is in the blogger dictionary.  Learn somethin' new every day!  One thing I have not done is brush my teeth....excuse me while I go do that.

So why am I sleep deprived and living on my laptop?  Let me tell you!  Last Thursday, at the end of our dance camp, Leslie said to me "hey, wouldn't it be fun to put a group of girls together and do competitions?"  Well you know me.  Dance competitions?  Where do I sign up?!
A few days later I sent her a very long email saying basically "this would be really awesome, and here is why, but if we're gonna do it, we need to make it happen, 'cause we're runnin' out o' time."
Like an awesome person, she totally jumped on board, so on Tuesday I headed out to Party Planet, and we set a date for auditions.  From there it has snowballed extraordinarily.  I created a Facebook page that has 90 likes already, and we started promoting.  Well, Leslie started promoting; I don't know anyone.
Someone that I do now know (or hope to know soon...I don't think FB messages count as knowing), is a guy by the name of Trevor.  He runs a company called Not About Dance.

"Using dance as a tool to make a difference in the world."

Basically they go around and do workshops and donate 20%-30% of  their profits to organizations that do good stuff.  You should read the website.  Whoever wrote it is much more eloquent than I.  Anyway, I found Trevor and his company because I was looking for a hip hop choreographer.  I know the kids will want to do hip hop, and I'm not totally comfortable with choreographing for competition.  I can throw something together for a dance camp for 7 yr olds, but I don't want to set my team up to fail, so we decided it would be best to hire that one out, at least this first year.  We'll see where I am next year.  Aaaaand the bunny trail brings us back around....I threw out some questions on the good ol' F.B., and was referred to Trevor.  I looked him up on YouTube and decided he looked pretty good.  I sent the link to Leslie, and she said he looked pretty good, so I messaged him and was like "here's the sitch, Trevor Parmentierrrrr..."  Not really.  I was very polite and professional.  He said that he would be willing to drive all the way here from Austin to teach my kids (when I get them), and that's a long drive, so I am appreciative.  And super excited.
One hurdle jumped, a whole lot more to go!
That same day I started on the team contract and calendar.  That took me most of the day.  Yesterday I ran (literally, I was quite proud of myself) back to Party Planet, and we continued hashing things out and figuring out our budget.

Side note: while I was there, a lady was talking to us and said "oh, you must be Mrs. Smith!"  It kinda made me feel a little famous.  End note.

Last night I finished (hopefully) the contract, found a couple more competitions for us to go to, started looking at shoes, started a sponsor letter, and wrote out the budget so that everyone can see exactly what they are paying for.  And it still is cheaper than cheer!  Go us!
And that brings us to 6:00 this morning, when I usually go back to sleep for a couple hours, but I couldn't because I had so many things running around my brain!  And so the liability waiver was born.  Party Planet recently purchased a van so that we can pick kids up after school for KidFit and other classes, which is totally awesome, and also will be a means of transportation for BYC Dance Company!  But if we're going to be driving kids all over the state, we need a good release form.  Apparently they don't mean a whole lot in the state of Texas, and there aren't any iron clad laws about what has to be in a release form, but it has to be understandable to the average Joe, state clearly what it is that they are waiving, and it has to have the important parts in all caps, or bold, or something to make it stand out.  I took a swim team waiver and a college travel thing waiver and used them as a template to create my own, awesome, hold harmless agreement that I believe is understandable and precise, and has a bunch of capital letters, so it should be good.  I'll send it off to some people who know more than I do and see what they have to say about it.
I believe today's major project (after I finish this, do my yoga, do the dishes, sweep the upstairs bathroom, and maybe vacuum) will be going to Party Planet, going over everything with Leslie (again), and then printing it all out and putting it in a binder that I can keep there, so that when people come in and want to know what's going on, anyone who happens to be there can say "here is the application for audition, the calendar, the contract, the liability form..." and should be able to answer any questions.

So yeah.  BYC Dance Company is my baby, and I'm really hoping that we will get a good turnout at auditions, the first week of September.  Wish me luck!

"Just Dancin, and Singin in the Rain"

Today is amazing.  I got up this morning and it was sprinkling a little bit, so I actually wore a shirt with sleeves, and set out to walk to party planet.  I had gotten about 1/4 mile down the road and it started really raining.  Not pouring, but enough that my hair was still wet an hour and a half later.  Yay rain!  But I had to keep going, because we had our last day of dance camp today.  Leslie and I spent the last four days working with a group of girls from about 6 yrs- yrs, 2 1/2 hours a day, doing ballet, jazz, and hip hop.  You all know what a huge fan of hip hop I am, but honestly, I felt pretty good about it.  They all had fun, it was cute and happy and girly, and I think it went well.  I just wish I had gotten a video of it...Maybe it's better that I didn't.  Now I can't pick it apart, and will have to remember it as being good.  I gotta say, though, the best part was hearing the girls all complaining about being sore after ballet.  Music to my ears!

I'm totally excited for regular classes to start again, now.  I'm really hoping that we get some of these kids to
sign up again, because they're just so adorable.  The other thing that Leslie and I have been talking about doing is holding auditions and starting up a little competition team.  Jlyn used to do ACC (the competitive cheer teams), but she moved to Houston (I think....somewhere like that) and is therefore no longer doing cheer, which leaves a pretty big hole in a lot of these kids' lives.  One that I would happily fill with dance.  Leslie says that most cheer and dance competitions around here are combined, and she still gets info about all of them because of cheer, so it wouldn't be too hard to get into, once we got some kids trained up a bit.  It would be so amazing to get to go to competitions and conventions and stuff like that again.  I've missed it terribly, even though it does eat up your weekends.  I looked up the Texas Dance Educator Association, because I know that they do some conventions and such for teachers, and I would love to go to one and actually meet the dance people around here...And guess what?  Their convention was this week.  Great timing.  There's another one in January, though, so maybe we will be able to make it to that one.

Leslie also said that she can teach me to spot the kids in their tumble classes, so I can help out in her gymnastics and tumble classes, which should be fun.  Hopefully I'll get to do all kinds of new things this year....

=]

International Spy Academy

This week I was helping out at VBS, aka international spy academy, and yes, that includes having all the songs stuck in my head ("agents of the one true God!") allllll night while I'm trying to sleep. I was working in the kindergarten classroom with a lady named Stephanie, who I'm pretty sure is the nicest person I've ever met. Not even kidding. Also laughs more than anyone I know. She rarely makes it through a whole sentence without laughing, even when she's exhausted and stressed and the kids are yelling at McPatty, the irish dog puppet with a mustache. The puppets were handled by a kid from the church and whatever friends he managed to bring along with him, and they had those kids rolling every night. He used an Irish accent and never really stuck to the script; you never knew what was going to happen during the puppet show. Like a horse named Buddha, for example. I thought Stephanie was going to die when he came out. Apparently she had told the boys that they could use the horse puppet, but only if they changed his name. I guess that condition slipped their minds. It was good to get out of the house and actually do something in the church, finally, but it was frustrating that vbs happened in the evenings, because I didn't see Jesse for 3 or 4 days. He's been leaving for work at 5:45 am, and not coming home till almost 5, which is half an hour after I left for work at party planet. Then I would go straight to vbs and not make it home till 9:30, by which time he was already in bed so he could get up at 5. He says it was the perfect arraignment. He got up and breakfast was on the table, his lunch and second breakfast were packed for him, and he came home to an empty house with dinner ready to go in the oven. It was like being a bachelor with a maid. Yesterday he was playing watchdogs on the Xbox with a bunch of kids who kept shooting him in the butt because they thought it was hilarious. I was working on some choreography for dance camp next week, so I had my headphones in, and he had the headset on, so I couldn't hear much of what was going on, but I was watching him laughing as these kids ran around their virtual world with him, and it reminded me how much kids always love him. It's kind of amazing how well he gets along with them, even when it's just online games. We went to 6 Flags for 4th of July with the Figueroas and Jesse and the girls made it their goal to make me throw up on the teacups. I am pleased to say that it didn't happen, even though we went two rounds, and even Jesse admitted that round two was a bad idea. My head was still swimming the next morning. He'll get another chance, though, because we bought season passes so we can go back when Cricket comes (13 days!). It will be good to have a sister in the house again. I'm hoping to rope her into doing yoga with me. Jesse makes fun of me for doing yoga, but whatevs. The other thing I need to start doing is learning to tumble. Leslie said that she'll teach me, I just need to actually make it happen. Anyway, I have digressed too far to make it back. Have a good weekend, errbody! Somebody should go to the beach for me, and mail me some sand, or something.