I have to get up at what time?!!

This past Saturday Ciera was performing, with 3 other girls, in a dance competition......45 minutes away from our house.......at 8:19AM....and had to be there 1.5 hours beforehand.   YIKES!  I asked her teacher "do we REALLY need to be there that early?"  After all the competition didn't start until 8:00AM how far ahead could they possibly get in 19 minutes?  She thought that no later than 7:30 would be ok.  This meant getting up at 5:30AM for me.........now I know some of you get up that early every day but for me I'm used to getting up at 7:15 so 5:30 is darn early!!!

I had every thing packed and ready to go before I went to bed, I had also asked Ciera "do you want to eat breakfast here or just have me get you out of bed and carry you to the car?" she said she wanted to eat breakfast here, I reminded her it would still be dark.  "That's ok"...all right then.

Flash forward to 6:00AM when I go in to wake her up....."just carry me to the car when we are ready" and she rolled back over and went to sleep!!  So at 6:20 I bundled her into a blanket, carried her downstairs and put her in a chair, went back up and got Tienna up, changed her, rolled her into a blanket and put her in the car, then went back and got Ciera and put her in the car. This of course was after 2 trips to the car already putting our necessary stuff in.  Whew!!  On the road by 6:40.  It surprised me how many people were on the 407 at this time on a Saturday morning.

We arrived at exactly 7:30, everyone and everything out of the car and headed to the entrance...great a flight of stairs and me with a stroller.   Thanks to other moms who have also been here and done this, they just grab the front of the stroller and up we go.

By 7:50, Ciera was in her dance costume, makeup on, and hair done.  Confession time....to those who know me, you know I don't wear makeup....so it's tricky enough putting it on let alone on someone else who happens to be a squiggling almost 6 year old.  But we got it done, by the way the lipstick is the worst part to do.  I also confess one of the other moms did her hair....I had no clue how to use the bun "net" nor how to put her fake ponytail on, and since I didn't even watch as I was doing her makeup at the time so I still don't know how, other than there were about 4,000,000 20 bobby pins in it.  This was the end result...



This is a $40 ponytail, which her teacher then lopped off to shoulder length...I almost cried!

I took advantage of the time and quickly fed Tienna breakfast and changed her out of her jammies!!! Tienna has quite a fan base at dance, there is a group of 9/10 year olds who adore her and she had quite an audience while she ate her breakfast and then lots exclamations like "oh look how small her pants are!"

Just after 8:00 we dropped the girls off with their teacher backstage...Ciera is too young to even think about being nervous her comment was "I'm so excited" so a hug and a kiss and she was off.   Their dance is very cute...it's jazz and done to Madonna's "Holiday", which brings back memories of the Dominican Republic for me at age...never mind....!!  But they did a great job and all smiles as they came off stage. 

Now the waiting started, we had to wait until 10:00 for adjudication....Tienna is not known for her waiting skills.   Lots of walking around, going in to sit and watch others perform, then more walking around, got Ciera out of her costume, then back in it to go on stage for adjudication (yes I know....why?)  She needs to wear it 3 more times without it being dirty!!!  

Finally it's 10:00 and they go back on for adjudication...by now Tienna is totally out of sorts, she had been up since 6:30 and her body was telling her it was soooooo nap time.  Way too much talking by the dance dude and they finally get to the scores.  Our girls were in Novice and got a score of 83.11 which earned them a Gold (there is amethyst, gold and platinum).   Well done girls!!!!

Now Tienna is out and out crying and thrashing around......get Ciera dressed to her asking about 15,000 50 times "Can we go back in and watch some more?"  "no honey I'm sorry we need to go home".  Back out to the car, this time helped down the stairs by a mom...seriously a man was standing there watching me bump the stroller down the stairs and a mom came over to help.  Granted Tienna was laughing at the bumping but still why would he not think to help?

Tienna fell asleep before we were on the highway, Ciera refused to give in to it..  Once home we had lunch, Tienna went to bed for a 3 hour nap, Ciera changed into her dance outfit from 2 years ago (yes it still fits!) and proceeded to put on an entire recital  in the kitchen

me?  I napped off and on for 2 hours in the afternoon on the couch.  These early  mornings are just too much for me!!!!