Spring Frenzy

It's not uncommon to have people comment, upon hearing I have four children, "My, you have your hands full", or otherwise similar sentiments.  Usually I just smile and nod and agree.  Busy...sure...[shrug].  It's just my life?
This spring has seemed particularly busy, with most weekends taking us from here to there and back three times.
It started with Honour's first competition of the season as I blogged about before.  A couple weeks later we realized that my worst fear was upon us....Honour and Verity had a competition on the same day. Eeeks.
Fortunately they were not at exactly the same time.  Honour was in Niagara Falls in the morning and Verity had to be in Milton for around noon.  It was Palm Sunday on top of it all, and I was needed at church in the morning to sing with the praise and worship team.  We devised a plan....

We've gotten to be fairly good friends with one of the families at the gym, and they mentioned that they'd be willing to take Verity to the competition if we needed them too.  At first I thought it wouldn't be necessary, but we soon realized that it would be a good idea.
So, James and Honour left the house quite early on Palm Sunday, around 6am, as this comp started a little earlier than most. They arrived in good time--scheduling success #1. I left a couple hours later and dropped Verity off at the friends house, then continued on to the church.
The service started at 10:30, and the team sang early in the program, so I was good to leave just before 11. I hopped in the van with the rest of the kids and my sister Maya, and we made our way to Milton.  I arrived even before the girls were let into the gym to start warm up.  Scheduling success #2.
Verity's competition started a little early, which really didn't help our cause in the end.  I took advantage of Maya's cell phone (I don't have one) to text with James, expecting that by that point, Honour's competition would be done and there would be news of how she did.  Unfortunately, despite their early start, the awards ceremony hadn't begun.  I would find out later that the competition was incredibly packed, with four stages running simultaneously to service 300 dancers. Scheduling blooper #1.

Verity's competition was moving along nicely, and I had expected that James and Honour, who were planning to head to Milton once they were done in Niagara Falls, would miss an element or two, but as the third element came and went, and still they hadn't left the Falls, I began to dread that they would miss the entire thing.  A text from James to say that he'd locked the keys in the car certainly didn't ease things along.  Scheduling Blooper #2....

Finally, the victory text arrived: Honour had won three medals, a first in her Fling, Third in Sean Truibhas and Fourth in her Sword Dance. Yay, another stamp!  They hopped in the car to try and get to Milton in time...

Meanwhile, Verity's last element was quickly approaching--her beam routine.  She had a rest period right before...but alas, her group moved to the beam section of the gym and began their practice run throughs...

I kept craning my neck to see through the high windows from the bleachers to the foyer, but it was Afton and Maya who saw them first...about 20 seconds into Verity's routine. :-S

This past weekend was slightly better.  Verity was scheduled for late Friday afternoon in Mississauga, and Honour was entered into a competition in Ajax the next morning.

Friday started with a trip to McMaster to meet with a PRS family I'd met online, through my PRS Facebook group.  Their little one is still in the NICU and scheduled for a jaw distraction tomorrow morning.  It was really nice to connect in person and (hopefully) be an encouragement.  After getting trapped in the NICU during a fire alarm, I then ran down to 2G where James was frantically motioning for me to get into the examining room for our appointment with the neurologist.  Jairus had an incident a year and a half ago that we suspected was a seizure.  Subsequent tests confirmed that he had underlying seizure activity present in his brain.  We had hoped the appointment would explain everything....but not so much.  Bottom line is that they wouldn't or couldn't confirm a seizure and we are left in hyper-hover mode. Sigh.
We had determined that there wouldn't be enough time to go home after the appointment before heading to Mississauga so we had planned to go straight there from Hamilton.  It was a good plan as of course the specialist appointment went much longer than we thought it would.  We arrived just in time for Verity's 4pm registration time.
Unlike Milton which was extremely crowded, Mississauga's facility was roomier and overall her flight was smaller, so less families were in attendance.  It made for a much more pleasant way to pass the 3 hours that we were there.

Bars at Mississauga from Leslie Kent on Vimeo.

Verity was the only attendee from her club for this flight, something that's not happened to her before, but I encouraged her by pointing out that she'd have her coach, Katie, all to herself.  She started with the parallel bars, moved to the beam, performed on the floor third, and finished with the vault.  Her back walkover on the beam was flawed again, as her first meet, but at least this time she hopped back up and tried again.  The second time around she was successful.  The other events seemed to go well, but she'd decided not to include her newly attained front tuck in her floor routine, as she'd been out from training all week due to a strep throat infection.  Still, the two back handsprings were impressive.

                   
Floor at Mississauga from Leslie Kent on Vimeo.

Her vault was also more confident and she stayed on her feet, unlike the last meet when she landed on her butt.  All this earned her a gold standing for both floor and bars, and silver for the beam and vault, for an overall rating of gold. Yay!

Up until right after Verity's comp, I actually wasn't going to be able to go to Ajax, as I had my last Musikgarten class to teach mid-morning.  I was pleased to be able to tell Honour at dinner that my director had moved the class to the following Saturday.  It ended up being a very good thing that I went...

We got up around 6am for a 7am departure.  We were about 10 to 15 minutes late leaving, and there was a bit of slow traffic through Toronto, so we arrived about 15 minutes into the 30 minute registration period.  No problem, right?
Hum.  HEW-mungus line-up.  I had thought this was a 'little' competition.  Hum.  Not so much.  Now to mention a slight glitch...
The day before the registration deadline, I had realized I couldn't send it in because I didn't have any cheques.  They were on order, and I had been expecting them any day, but they hadn't arrived yet.  I called the organizer to find out if they'd accept an email money transfer, but before I could even suggest this, she told me to email in Honours info and bring the cheque on the day of.  That sounded great to me, and I immediately sat down and emailed her with the registration particulars.
It wasn't until a day or two before the competition that I had a troubling thought; she hadn't emailed back to confirm the registration.  James pointed out that they didn't confirm with snailmail registrations so why would it be any different for email?  Spam boxes, that's why.
When we got back from Mississauga with Verity, I emailed the organizer and asked her to confirm that she'd received Honour's registration.  She didn't email back.  Hum.
We set off anyways, with a printed copy of my original email in my purse.  Good thing...

Sure enough, Honour's name was not on the list.

Some slightly tense moments later, as I sweetly insisted that I had followed the organizers instructions, all was well.  They conjured up the number #249 for Honour.
Glitch number two arrived only a few moments later when the Flora dance began and I realized with horror that we had forgotten Honours underskirt.  Fortunately, a quick trip out to the vendors in the hall furnished us with a new one (for a mere 40$). Ah well, her old one was pretty sad looking.
After that, things motored along.  Honour's group was quite large, so I was nervous that her chances were slimmer than usual.  It was also a 10 and up group, which meant she could very well be competing against 16 year olds--and some of them did look around that age.  We were there alone, as another competition had her teacher and some of her dancemates off in London.

Once her Flora was accomplished, I got her into her kilt for the rest of the dances.  There was only 15-20 minutes or so between each dance, so she would do a quick run through of the upcoming dance, and then we'd wait back on the bleachers for the announcement to line up.  Fling was next, always a strong dance for Honour, followed by Sword, usually strong as well, and finishing up with Sean Truibhas (say trews).  That last one has been slowly becoming more confident for Honour.

                  
Sean Truibhas from Leslie Kent on Vimeo.

As usual, after the dancing was done, we all waited anxiously in the bleachers for the results to be tabulated. The first phase is always the worst; waiting to hear if her number would be called. Her newly added #249 would be the first called, if it would be...
And there it was, "249".  Phew.
Then comes the raised hope that perhaps her medal would be a first, second, or third and win her a stamp. Flora results were called without even a nod at Honour.  Fling was next....and there she was, walking confidently over to the official to receive her first place medal. Yes!
And now a more recent phase introduced....Miss Diannes students are often winning trophies.  Honour has not yet accomplished this.  But as I watched her receive another first a moment later for her Sean Truibhas, I began to feel a little tug of hope...that was two dances out of four that she'd won first place....
It was not to be, however, as the girl who'd won first place for the other two dances had also won medals behind Honour in the Fling and Sean Truibhas.  Ah well.  Happy for a stamp today!

Now, it was Jairus' turn for the spotlight, a rare occasion.  As soon as we started to gather up our things to leave Honour's competition, he caught my attention by patting his chest and making drum motions.  "Me?", he asked, "Me?".  At hearing my answer of "Yes, Jairus, your turn now", he responded excitedly "YES!".

The drive back seemed to take even a little longer than going out there, and it was mid afternoon before we stumbled through the front door.  Verity needed to go begging soliciting the neighbours to buy her latest gym fundraiser, as money was due back yesterday, and I needed to confirm that Jairus had all the wardrobe needed for his concert debut with the beginner band at church.
His white shirt just barely made the grade, slightly short in the sleeves, but acceptable, and after a frenzied search around the house, we located his navy clip-on tie.  By 5:30 we were on the road again for his 6pm call time.
This is the first year that Jairus has been playing in the beginner band.  Last fall, the director, also his former public school music teacher approached me and asked if he might want to join. We managed to finagle the rehearsal times into the schedule every Tuesday night and he seemed to be thoroughly enjoying his new musical expression--the drums.  He played out in one church service prelude but this would be a 'real' concert.  It was called Blazing Brass and it was a fundraiser for sending kids to music camp.
We arrived a couple minutes late and Jairus immediately went up to run through the songs with the group. We had an hour until the concert started so I relaxed and spent some time chatting with church friends.

7pm arrived and the concert began.  Jairus filed out with his bandmates.  Unfortunately, the first song they would play was combined with the Junior band and their drummer took the stool.  There wasn't anything else for Jairus to sit on, the leader was on the other side of the platform and of course none of the kids around him thought to help get him a chair to sit on....so he stood for the first 20 minutes or so, until their song came up.

He 'assisted' the Junior band drummer for that first song on the floor tom, which I got video of, but you can't really hear his part.  Then they played a song on their own and that's where he really shone.  He was on the snare and was well practiced.  I thought he did just perfect--even when he wasn't watching the director and beat one final tap after everyone had stopped.  His grin sent mild chuckles through the first few rows of the sanctuary.

James had to stay back and help with tear down, as he'd been the soundguy for the evening, and since supper had actually been a late lunch of Swiss Chalet leftovers, the kids were now hungry.  A final celebration at Wendy's was the answer, made even better by some friends joining us.

Am I busy?  Do I have my hands full?  Absolutely.  Is this a bad thing?

I wouldn't trade it for the world. :-)

One Relieved Mama

Today was Honours first Highland dance competition since July 1st of last year.  You might remember that I blogged about some of our challenges last summer.  The plan I laid out there has been somewhat successful.

Honour did go to physio, and the therapist did have a few exercises to do, and we did do them a few times over the summer.  But then school started, I stopped doing the exercises and so Honour did too.  She did ride the stationary bike for a bit over the summer with James.  But then that slowly petered out.  She did use her highland dance notebook for longer than the previous two measures, probably a few months.  But that also lost steam.  Her dance chart has had up and down popularity.  It's not yet all filled in; I think it has about 20 more spots on it or so.

Circumstances didn't help her determination very much.  There were a couple competitions in the fall that we couldn't put her in because of lack of funds.  End of summer is a killer time for us, as we wait for my various music teaching jobs to kick back in.  I was also suddenly realizing that I wasn't as aware of the competitions any more, because I don't attend any of her classes like I used to.  Once I started teaching three nights a week, I lost the luxury of sitting in on her classes for an hour or two a week to keep abreast of the goings-on.  James was usually picking her up from class and he didn't think to check the bench her teacher usually leaves the application forms on, and Honour didn't have the initiative or courage to ask herself.  

She was registered for a competition in London around the third weekend of November, but two days before it, James was rushed to hospital with what turned out to be a pulmonary embolism.  Then there were no more until the new year.

Honour triumphantly brought home a handful of competition registration forms about a week and a half ago. The deadline for the soonest one was only two to three days later, so I rushed to get the forms in the mail when suddenly I realized that she didn't have her new 2014 dance card.  I had to race to get that sent to Whitby and hope against hope that it would get back to me on time.  It arrived four days ago.  Phew! Then I had to get the form sent off to join the dance organization that was hosting the comp, or else pay a fee for non-membership. Since the fee for membership is about the same cost as non-membership fees for two competitions, and her next one in a few weeks is being hosted by the same group, it made sense just to join in case another comp comes up later in the year.  I only hoped it would arrive and be processed before today's competition, lest they stop me at the door and make me pay the non-membership fee in order for Honour to compete.  Then, as I was doing all this mailing, I realized that her Aboyne costume didn't fit any more.  It had been snug and short-ish last summer at Embro, so I knew it would be hopeless now.  Kijiji and a dance mom from Welland came to the rescue with a gorgeous practically new Aboyne outfit that we picked up only two days ago.  The final challenge came when we got home from getting the new outfit and I had her try it on so I could take pics to send to her teacher for approval.  Her ghillies (dance shoes) didn't fit. I suddenly remembered how snug they were last summer and how much she had complained about them. Sigh. Providentially, one of Honours dance studio friends had outgrown her hers and was willing to pass them down.  By yesterday afternoon, everything was in place. (If you don't count staying up until 1am hemming the new skirt, and lengthening her old crinoline).

The competition was in Cambridge, which is about a 45 minute drive from our house--when the weather is good.  We had to be there for 8:30am and didn't really have any option but to bring all four kids.  James was scheduled for some gigs this afternoon so we had to take two vehicles, which I wasn't thrilled about.  Despite many of the roads being yucky with a thick layer of snow, we still made it on time.

The competition looked to be not as large as many we've been to, and I was happy about that.  Checking the program, I found that Honours group only had 10 girls.  Usually we've seen groups a little larger, even up to 18.  

We got her registered and then found some of her studio-mates along with one of the junior coaches getting warmed up.  Ghillies on, vest hooked up, everything looked good and we were ready to start.  

The Fling was on the docket first and I was glad for that as it's a strong dance for Honour and her best known.  Her group was called to line up and after saying a prayer with her I watched her cross the gym to find her spot, spray bottle in hand to take the dust off her feet.

I should have realized that after so many months of being out of competition that the first dance up would likely be rough.  I knew she had been nervous and it really came out as she became distracted and completely missed some crucial steps and turns not too far into the dance.  My heart sank and I felt tears threatening.  She returned to the bench and refused my comforting arm across her shoulder.  Her face was miserable and I finally left her to work it through on her own.

With the groups being smallish, it wasn't long before her next dance was up, the Sword.  This is another one that she's done well a number of times before in competition.  Up she went to stand before the crossed swords and with my nearly silent cheering from the bench, she worked her way cleanly through the three sections of the dance.  Relief made it's first appearance and she was a different girl returning to our spot on the bleachers.

The Sean Trews was soon upon us, a dance she's competent in and has placed 3rd and 5th in previous competitions, back in Beginner level.  She seemed to handle this one with no issues, though I find these days that I'm not as adept at seeing missteps or bloopers as I was back in beginner level.  The distinctions are becoming too fine for my rudimentary skills.

We bustled off to the change room to don the new Aboyne and have it checked by Rachel, the junior coach. One minor adjustment to the length of the skirt, accomplished by flipping the waistband down once, and she was beautiful and ready to go.  I felt my nervousness return as Rachel made last minute corrections to the final step of her Lilt--ones I felt certain she wouldn't be able to get under her belt in time.  Still, she went out and performed quite well I thought.

By 11am, the dancing was done and the waiting began.  The judges and organizers have to gather all the scores and determine the medal and trophy winners--this always takes a bit of time.  About a half an hour later, they began awarding the Primary level dancers with their participation gifts, followed by medals for the top scorers.  Three tiny boys, always a hit with their kilts and vests, cleaned up most of the first, second and third place finishes.

Honour's group would be the last announced, so we waited through the two Beginner levels, and one Novice level, before the numbers for her level were called.  In Highland dance competition, only the dancers who receive a medal are called to present before the audience, so that tense moment as the MC calls out the list of numbers is a killer.  Too well I remembered the previous 3 or 4 competitions when Honour's number had not been called.  Saddest parenting moment ever.

The relief that washed over me as I heard that blessed "2-2-5" today was enough to bring me to tears, which I hopefully hid from my benchmates, none that I knew personally.  I watched her delighted face light up and she skipped to join the line, her dance card clutched in her hand (her lanyard has gone missing to hang it from her neck).

I had been praying simply that she bring something home, any medal placement at all--and she had up to 6 chances per dance.  Once she joined the line of winners and the possibility of returning home empty handed was banished, my hopes began to rise once more.  Could she possibly win a first, second or third, and earn a stamp on her card?  That barren, stampless, Novice level  card until now?

The previous group finished their awards and Honour's line trooped up to the staging area.  They began with the Fling award and I hardly listened--we knew there was no chance of a Fling win.  Next, the Sword.  First place was called....second place....number 225!! I was stunned and thrilled and James and I flapped our hands at each other.

Sean Trews was dance number three and I nearly fell off the bench as 225 was called for first place.  The lady beside me, waiting for the afternoon competition to start with her older daughter, turned and beamed a smile of congratulations.  The Lilt awards were called without a peep to Honour however; I guess she must have misstepped somewhere along that line.

What a happy, relieving day!  As a dance mom friend remarked when she heard the news, "Aw, Honour's got her 'groove' back!". :-)

I spent the afternoon finally organizing Honour's medals onto this presentation board that her teacher gave us way back near the beginning, nearly 4 years ago.  It took a bit of searching through emails, facebook posts, messages and many files of pictures, but we finally compiled all the dates, dances and placings of all her medals, save for two which are still confounding us. At the bottom are the medals she's received from her annual dance exam.  Honour is now highly motivated to reach her next goal: make it up to Intermediate level by the July 1st Embro competition.  I'd better get her registered for more competitions!