Vacation / Nationals - part 4 - Celebration!

Woohoo!  The Main Event! 

The whole reason we flew to Florida in the summer / hurricane season and put up with zillions of tourists & construction even worse than we have in Michigan!

Since we were blinded by the intense blue lights, why not take a pic?

The table of hardware!

wooooooooooooooo!

The older girls' first routine wasn't until 3:30ish Wednesday afternoon so at this point it was pretty calm in the dressing room. 

Hanging out before contemporary.

They got a ShowStopper Award - given by the judges as a routine that stands out to them. 

that's Angel doing the leap

Angel's solo was #3 of the day Thursday.  

I love candid shots!  

Here she is going backstage with her choreographer, Claire. 

Deep conversations with Chantel before lyrical.

Waiting to go backstage, watching other dances. 

Primping before jazz.

Walking thru jazz, getting in the zone....

Senior (and 1 adult) solos & small groups done!

The trophy was only for the adjudications, so I ended up buying her the 1st place trophy. 

Which we weren't thinking that we still had a plane trip home, ooops! - but luckily there was a UPS store in the lobby of the hotel so I had them shipped. 

We kind of wish that the big glittery plaque actually said "National Finals" on them instead of looking just like the one from Regionals.  To make them special, ya know.   And when they won the BIG one, each member should have gotten a jacket or at least a medal, so they all had something tangible to take home.  Just my thoughts. 

With Mrs Terina, owner of the studio

We Found Love / tap stolen from Celebration's Instagram

Team pic

Walking thru Girl Power

How else would you carry a bunch of trophies??

Friday 6/29 was the Showdown.  

This was the highest scoring groups in each category

Rising Star (intermediate level) 12 & under / 13 & up

Shining Star (Advanced level) 12 & under / 13 & up. 

Plus there were Judge's Choice routines, too. 

Let's get ready to rumble!

The place was packed!  

I'm surprised this came out as well as it did - my hands were shaking so bad & I was still jumping around & screaming!

Miss Gabby, the choreographer

Vacation / Nationals - part 3

 6/26 - 6/30

I'll put the competition itself in a post of its own, since it was happening in this time frame.   Most of the days it was done around 7 or so, so the evenings were still free. 

The view from our 17th floor room.

One thing about the afternoon storms, they made some fantastic cloud formations. 

Not an unusual sight - a group congregating in one room - probably plotting.

 Outside VooDoo Donuts

We had 2 groups go thru the Escape Room and make it out!

A group of adults were going to go, but we missed our time slot because we had to wait until the improv contest winners were awarded.  So we went & had a few drinks while the kids tried to Escape.  Sounds fair!

But they found us.  Booo!

The last night we were in Orlando, we went to City Walk one last time.

YESSSS!  Haunted golf!

It was fun & I loved the theme!

Then Angel & Sarah wanted to get cornrow braids. 

She actually *just* took these out.  2+ weeks later & they still looked pretty good. 

One of the 'little' girls was getting a hair wrap so they had to pose with her (and yet another girl photobombed)

A quick ride on the boat.  This went between hotels down(up?) river and City Walk.   

They took advantage of the mist around the Universal Globe for some cool photo ops.

Chocolate shake from the Toothsome Chocolate Emporium.  This is one of the smaller treats that I've seen pics of - others had a full piece of cake or cupcake on top of them.

Saturday the 30th was our flight home.  

Our plane was fancy, in that we could track ourselves!

My personal drama was I got dehydrated that Sunday at SeaWorld and my contact baked onto my eyeball or something.  I couldn't get it out normally & ended up peeling it off my eye.  So yeah, it was irritated.  Like raging pinkeye red (which made my iris glow a really cool light blue).  But other than being incredibly light sensitive, it didn't hurt & wasn't goopy.  I went to an urgent care in Orlando on Thursday who gave me antibiotic eye drops and assured me I could fly without my eyeball popping.  I went to another urgent care when I got home, and he told me to stop the antibiotics and gave me a card to an ophthalmologist.  So I've been to see her 3 times now.  I'm finally cleared to wear contacts again but on a limited basis until I get a new prescription for a different brand of contacts.   I was indeed happy to make it home with 2 working eyeballs. 

My next post will be all the dance pics and resulting excitement!