Just kidding. No, this is not going to be Memory's "all dancing all the time" blog. I have so many things I need to post about. Our 11th anniversary, Mother's Day, what my sweet kids are up to. That's for when I have time. Since I don't have time right now, I thought I'd share this *sweet* west coast swing I just found. Yeah, I'm thinking about dancing right now (thanks, Carolyn!) and I really need to get back to work. Of course, we realize this is all just for me so I can have a quick and easy place to find this video again. But I don't think there is any way you can NOT enjoy this video.
Sharing the ups and downs of real family life!
Monday, May 19, 2008
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Dallin's 8th Birthday!
It is really, really hard to believe that Dallin would've turned 8 years old today. That's a big deal for us Mormons, as he would be getting baptised now. It made the day very bittersweet. It's interesting how his birthday creeps up on me. Last night I was at my Young Women's activity and I was just in a funk. I couldn't concentrate. Didn't really feel like chatting. Just wanted to go home and lay down for no apparent reason at all. Then I realized that this happens every year. I think that whether I'm conscious of it or not, I am playing back in my mind what I was going through at this time 8 years ago. When I realize that, and how it affects me, I put a lot less pressure on myself to act normal and like everything is fine around his birthday. It's just a hard time for me.
So, today, like all of his birthdays, we went to the cemetery. For some reason, every year, it is a big hassle. We don't plan very well or something. This year we got a very late start. Evan sat in some bark dust at the store we stopped at on the way. Michael was pulling slivers out of him for about 30 minutes while Evan just wailed and wailed. By the time we got stopped to pick up flowers and "lunch" (which turned out to be kind of yucky granola bars), it was already 1:30, half an hour past nap time, and Maren was asleep in the back. Then I'm thinking oh great, she's not going to sleep when we get home and I'm not going to get my work done. Anyway, it's always a stressful day and I'd like to just sit and think about Dallin and all of the experiences we had with him. The beautiful thing is that when we got to the cemetery, all of the stress melted away. We sat on a blanket and looked through Dallin's scrapbook. Michael read Evan copies of the letters that Michael and I wrote to Dallin to put in his casket. Michael cleaned up his grave marker and the boys took care of the flowers. Maren enjoyed the birds all around. It was a really nice time. We sure miss that boy and can't wait to see him and love him. Evan can't wait either. When we mentioned maybe going to the cemetery tomorrow instead of today, because of all of our fiascos, he completely lost it and said we had to go today. In his prayers lately, he's said things like, "Heavenly Father, we miss Dallin. We want him to come alive again." Although he realizes it will be a while and has said things like, "we just have to wait 60 years, Mom." Too right, son. :-)
This is a tangent, but you know how you mentally prepare for things before they happen and plan how you're going to react? Well, every time I think about us having a house fire and having to get us all out, I think grab the kids and the only possession I care about getting is Dallin's scrapbook. Because of that, I realized today that I should scan in those pages and maybe put them on the blog. I think I'll do that tomorrow. We'll see. I have a lot more stuff to blog about since I've been so unfaithful. Right now it's either blog, work or sleep. We'll see what wins out tomorrow.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
My name is Memory...
And I'm a danceaholic. There. I'm out with it. During the day, I can't live without putting on some dancing music and sambaing or pirouetting or something around the house. When I sleep, I have ballet dreams mostly. When I should be working, I'm watching Dancing With the Stars online (side note: That is the ONLY show I watch. I don't really even have time to watch that with how much work I have, but I figure if I've only got 45 minutes of self-indulgence all week, that's not all bad. And who needs a TV anymore? Any show I ever care to watch is online. I love it!) When I should be sleeping, I'm checking out the latest west coast swing videos (this is the truth...I love watching west coast swing in between typing up my work because it is so fluid and smooth on the floor. When I get done watching, I feel like my fingers glide over the keys more effortlessly and more quickly. I think I get my work done faster that way! Sometimes I'm choreographing amazing ballets as I crank up some awesome Josh Groban. I don't know...like I've said before, dancing is just part of who I am. What would I do without it? I love it! So, more self-indulgence here (and so I can come back to this post any time and watch some of my favorite videos), I'm putting on some of my favorite dances. Some of you may be completely uninterested and that's okay. You have your quirks, too. Ha! Here we go...
First, a clogging video. It's funny about me and clogging. I came into it because it was a free way to dance and get some exercise. I do enjoy it but it just isn't filling my dancing need completely. First of all, I went from the ballet world where you dance in a big, beautiful theater with a live orchestra to the high school gym dancing to a CD. Ha! And some clogging is a big hickish. And I don't really enjoy "hickish". :-) Probably the biggest thing is that it's just not expressive. It's mostly just about fast feet. Fast feet are fun and I'm good at fast feet. But I want people to feel something when I dance, too. I want to portray love or anger, hurt or joy. And a lot of that emotion comes from the arms. There just isn't much of that in clogging. Well, none, really. In fact, the other day in clogging class we were going to take our hands off our hips and do a little ditty with them for a second. The girl next to me, who has always been a clogger said, 'I think I'd rather chop my arms off.' A ha! That's the difference between us. Anyway, don't get me wrong, I do love clogging. I suppose I would consider myself a clogger, even, now. But, I've got to find another way to meet my dancing needs. Here's a video I found of some pretty awesome clogging guys. Pretty fast!
And here's my old world...ballet! My first love. This Polina girl is amazing and I love this video. The second one is a promo video for the company I used to dance with in California, Inland Pacific Ballet. It is for The Little Mermaid, which I TOTALLY wish I could see because it looks amazing. The guy you see playing Prince Eric was my old dance partner, Chris Bonomo, who you can also see in Newsies. He's still dancing with them. Pretty cool.
Here's one of my favorite west coast swing dances. It's a little faster than most of them you see, but still very fun. I love all the spins in west coast swing...probably because I'm very good at them. Get me spinning and I don't want to stop! Anyway, I would love to be able to find classes for west coast swing. And, more importantly, I'd like to be able to afford them. Some day...please!!!
Okay, the following are some of my favorite dances from the ballroom world. Most of these come from Dancing with the Stars, where I've kept a mental list of ones I've loved over the years. Some of them you would have to skip past the first 3 minutes or so to get to the dance, but I couldn't find the shortened ones. I would love to be able to get back into ballroom, which I have done a bit of but not too much. I think I would be pretty great at it...if only I had the money to take lessons. Boy, that keeps coming up. Time to find Michael a job!! (His externship ended yesterday, by the way, so he's done with school and we're just waiting to hear responses from companies that we've sent his resume out to!!!)
Samba:
Mambo:
Tango:
Paso Doble:
Cha Cha:
Quick Step:
Rumba:
So, I'm exercising like a crazy woman lately. Monday through Friday I get up and meet a friend (thank you, Sarah!) at the church at 5:45 a.m.! We do Pilates or Buns of Steel and hope to expand our repertoire with some cheap new DVDs. Then my second workout for Monday is clogging class. That's pretty intense. And then on Saturdays I'm taking a Zumba class. Ever heard of that? I hadn't either until a couple of months ago when I was looking for a dance class to take through the rec. center and stumbled across it, wondered what it was all about, searched on the Internet and found this (it's a 9 minute video, FYI):
Is that teacher amazing, or what? So, anyway, it's an aerobics workout that combines Latin dancing (samba, merengue, salsa, cha cha, etc.) with some hip hop, belly dancing, African dancing. It's very, very fun. More like a party than a workout. :-) It's only about $300 to become a certified instructor so I've been seriously considering it. We'll see. Anyway, so that's 7 workouts a week. Not bad for an old "tub o' goo", as my good friend Tamra would say. Hopefully that goo will be getting a little firmer here any day soon. :-)
Now that I've got about an hour's worth of video on here to indulge in at a later date, I'm off to bed. Oh, after one more post.
First, a clogging video. It's funny about me and clogging. I came into it because it was a free way to dance and get some exercise. I do enjoy it but it just isn't filling my dancing need completely. First of all, I went from the ballet world where you dance in a big, beautiful theater with a live orchestra to the high school gym dancing to a CD. Ha! And some clogging is a big hickish. And I don't really enjoy "hickish". :-) Probably the biggest thing is that it's just not expressive. It's mostly just about fast feet. Fast feet are fun and I'm good at fast feet. But I want people to feel something when I dance, too. I want to portray love or anger, hurt or joy. And a lot of that emotion comes from the arms. There just isn't much of that in clogging. Well, none, really. In fact, the other day in clogging class we were going to take our hands off our hips and do a little ditty with them for a second. The girl next to me, who has always been a clogger said, 'I think I'd rather chop my arms off.' A ha! That's the difference between us. Anyway, don't get me wrong, I do love clogging. I suppose I would consider myself a clogger, even, now. But, I've got to find another way to meet my dancing needs. Here's a video I found of some pretty awesome clogging guys. Pretty fast!
And here's my old world...ballet! My first love. This Polina girl is amazing and I love this video. The second one is a promo video for the company I used to dance with in California, Inland Pacific Ballet. It is for The Little Mermaid, which I TOTALLY wish I could see because it looks amazing. The guy you see playing Prince Eric was my old dance partner, Chris Bonomo, who you can also see in Newsies. He's still dancing with them. Pretty cool.
Here's one of my favorite west coast swing dances. It's a little faster than most of them you see, but still very fun. I love all the spins in west coast swing...probably because I'm very good at them. Get me spinning and I don't want to stop! Anyway, I would love to be able to find classes for west coast swing. And, more importantly, I'd like to be able to afford them. Some day...please!!!
Okay, the following are some of my favorite dances from the ballroom world. Most of these come from Dancing with the Stars, where I've kept a mental list of ones I've loved over the years. Some of them you would have to skip past the first 3 minutes or so to get to the dance, but I couldn't find the shortened ones. I would love to be able to get back into ballroom, which I have done a bit of but not too much. I think I would be pretty great at it...if only I had the money to take lessons. Boy, that keeps coming up. Time to find Michael a job!! (His externship ended yesterday, by the way, so he's done with school and we're just waiting to hear responses from companies that we've sent his resume out to!!!)
Samba:
Mambo:
Tango:
Paso Doble:
Cha Cha:
Quick Step:
Rumba:
So, I'm exercising like a crazy woman lately. Monday through Friday I get up and meet a friend (thank you, Sarah!) at the church at 5:45 a.m.! We do Pilates or Buns of Steel and hope to expand our repertoire with some cheap new DVDs. Then my second workout for Monday is clogging class. That's pretty intense. And then on Saturdays I'm taking a Zumba class. Ever heard of that? I hadn't either until a couple of months ago when I was looking for a dance class to take through the rec. center and stumbled across it, wondered what it was all about, searched on the Internet and found this (it's a 9 minute video, FYI):
Is that teacher amazing, or what? So, anyway, it's an aerobics workout that combines Latin dancing (samba, merengue, salsa, cha cha, etc.) with some hip hop, belly dancing, African dancing. It's very, very fun. More like a party than a workout. :-) It's only about $300 to become a certified instructor so I've been seriously considering it. We'll see. Anyway, so that's 7 workouts a week. Not bad for an old "tub o' goo", as my good friend Tamra would say. Hopefully that goo will be getting a little firmer here any day soon. :-)
Now that I've got about an hour's worth of video on here to indulge in at a later date, I'm off to bed. Oh, after one more post.
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