December Isn't Slowing Down

Faith had her Christmas gymnastics recital last week.  I remember when she was such a little thing barely doing cartwheels and back bends and now look at her!

It was a treat to have Grandma and Grandpa Cannon come to see her.

Stretchy!

I don't think I'd be looking quite that happy in the same position.

Last week I went to parent observation night for Cannon's contemporary class.  Oh, man!  They seriously WORK these kids!  I was in pain for him and I was super impressed.  Sadly, I didn't get to go to his ballet parent observation night this week because he had his last rehearsal before Nutcracker opened.
His hair in this picture is cracking me up!  It's so big!  A serious haircut is coming his way as soon as his Nutcracker run is over.

Cannon and his teacher-- I was fascinated watching her teach the class.  She was exquisite in her movements.

Wednesday night his cast opened and I bought a ticket up in the nosebleeds so I could watch him.  It was so much fun.  We took Trax downtown because we had a snowstorm.

We slicked down his hair with  a LOT of gel and hairspray.  But then I really missed seeing his big head of curls when he was on stage.  For today's performances, we kept it curly.

I'm not going to lie...

... it was pretty exciting to see him on the big stage...

... and to see him name on the program (third party boy).

Tomorrow evening Abe and I are both going to see the show.  

Elinor's piano teacher has a few of her students play a concert of their Christmas pieces at a local school for very special needs students.  Here is Elinor's piece, "I Saw Three Ships".  It isn't her best performance and it's definitely not a very good piano,  but she still did great.

And speaking of Elinor doing great... she is just loving swim team and dropping times like crazy!

 Swim meets are kind of long and not the most exciting spectator sport, but she is having a blast and I do enjoy watching her race.  This week she got first place in her heats of both races-- the 50 free and 100 free.  She is usually in a couple relays as well.

We didn't get to go see Bethany perform her annual Christmas concert with the Lyceum Orchestra earlier this month because their guest artist was Marie Osmond and ticket prices were a little too steep, but Bethany did get this picture taken with her.  I'm pretty confident that Bethany was the biggest Marie Osmond fan in the Orchestra.  She grew up watching The Donny and Marie Show on  VHS tapes I got for Abe for his birthday many years back.  He is the true Osmond fan.  

December is an extremely busy time with Christmas parties and recitals and performances and such, but it is is very rewarding as well.  All this and I haven't even touched on Clark's mission farewell stuff.  Yikes!  This post has been exhausting to write... have we really done all this (and more) in December?  Some people don't like January after all the hoopla of December.  I, for one, feel like January is a beautiful, calm, peaceful vacation!

And I'll leave you with this: Cannon "singing" along with his piano recital song.  I started secretly recording him because I thought it was funny and that he's get really embarrassed and forbid me to post it anywhere.  That's how my teens operate.  

But no! Cannon saw me and said, "Hey, record me from the beginning!" and then he really hammed it up.