She finds her VOICE!!!

So for those of you who follow the family, you may know that although H loves to act and sing and has taken voice lessons along the way, she has always held back a bit. She never really brought it at an audition and blew the directors off their chairs or anything wild. She would sing. She never really practiced to sing great, she just kind of showed up and did it and hoped for the best. She did okay. She got parts, songs and lines. But never scored a lead and always the directors would say later when they heard she really could sing that they were surprised how nice her voice was, cause she really didn't showcase her talent in auditions.

I tried to tell her but you know teenagers...mom is never right until maybe later after 10 other people tell her the same thing.  So, despite many many plays over many many summers and her Middle School production last year, she hasn't had a lead part. Which is fine. She's building a resume and honing her skill. I knew eventually she'd come into her own.

Well, it finally happened. At the end of this camp year, her group put on a cabaret production of Glee songs and H had several solo parts. But, the one that really surprised us was her singing with 2 of the biggest voices at camp a solo in "Don't Rain on My Parade".  The worrisome part was the young girl also doing part of this solo is a belt singer. She can wail. It is what she does. She has a great voice. She is a stage singer.  The young man also has a great voice - his is probably the best of the three of them, great control, tone, richness. These kids all of them are uber talented. Kind of crazy for a bunch of 6, 7, and 8th graders. H's voice is beautiful, rich and has great tone but control and belting not her high suit. Not cause she couldn't do it but because she refused to practice to get better at it. Till NOW.

See below. She is the second voice you hear on the solo the brunette standing next to the blond girl throughout. She is walking in on the floor from stage right so I couldn't see it was her right away and so surprising was her performance that you hear us pondering if that is her...cause we were blown away at our little girl's ability to wail!!!  And stay on key which is not always the case as you shall also see. (sorry).  You Go Girl. I think our little performer has finally arrived. Watch out world!!!

Too Cool for School

Well, we are back to school and schedules and dance class and Girl Scouts and our nice normal life. Okay maybe not that normal but chaos is not necessarily the enemy at our house. We balance and juggle and tumble and giggle through it daily.  The typical day starts at 6:30 a.m. and has H out the door for the bus by 7:30.  Joel gets ready for work and while he is getting lunch packed and eating breakfast, I'm showering for a hard day in the office -- my home office that is - still can't get over how awesome that really is.  He kisses me and heads off for the day and I grab breakfast and head to the computer to start my day. I break for lunch at 1 p.m. and then the tricky crazy part of the day begins. 2 days a week I have to pick H up at school cause she has early dance classes and needs to get home, change eat something and then she is off to dance class. She dances 4 days a week. 1 day a week she have 5 hours of class and then homework when she gets home. She eats before and after and is beat on that day but she is pretty disciplined about getting homework done at school or while eating before or after dance. Then the other 3 days she has more holes for homework between all that pirroutting and such. Twice a month she has Girl Scouts. And shortly, school activities will begin too and she will be doing theater again which is when things get really crazy.

Thing is as crazy as all that is, we manage it pretty easily. Days fly by and sometimes I wish I didn't have to run crazy around town dropping picking dropping picking all afternoon, but when I see how hard she works to get the schoolwork done between it and how determined she is to be a good student and a good dancer, I'm pretty proud. She's growing into a lovely human being who can dance pretty well too.

My one hope is that she doesn't fall in love with another activity cause I'm pretty sure we have no more room in this crazy tight schedule.