Delaware & Philly (2 Dance Recitals)

What could possibly be cuter than one little girl in a tutu prancing around the stage...


... 3 little girls in tutus!

Phil and I had the pleasure of seeing my little nieces perform on the big stage this weekend. It was the stage debut of Jaqueline (top) and Madeline (lion), and the second for Hayley (pink feathers).

After a night of bowling (no judgement please! my hospital recently started a bowling league, and who was I to say no?!) I drove in town to meet Phil at Helen's where he had just seen a performance by the very talented Jimmy James. He convinced me to stay for one drink with Shay and Jimmy... and well, 3 hours later we were still cozied up to the bar next to the piano. D'oh! We high-tailed it out of there, and made the mad dash back to the hills, finally crawling into bed around 3! This would not have been a terrible thing, except for the small fact that we had to be in Delaware by11! This meant we needed to be on the road by 8 in order to get down there in time for the first of the weekend's recitals. We woke up at 8!!!

I bolted upright out of bed in a major panic because apparently in a foggy sleep-deprived stupor I must have reached over and turned off the alarm and shut my eyes... shit shit shit... I shook Phil awake and managed to pull ourselves together in record time and run out the door!

We made it with a few minutes to spare and head over to the behind my sister Heather's house to see the show. It was so damn cute and actually a very well organized show! The younger girl's teachers were just off stage on either side, and it was so cute to watch the girls trying to focus on what they were doing while keeping them in eyesight!

After the big day, we all retired back to Heather's, conveniently located right behind the High School, and had ourselves a fun afternoon playing with the kids and enjoying some hearty BBQ offerings compliments of my brother-in-law Jerry.

That night, once the children were safely in bed, the adults had themselves a grand old time drinking, playing croquet, and laughing... a lot! I should mention that my family is extremely competitive (in a fun way!) when it comes to games, so invariably any sporting event becomes an extremely colorful experience!


We stayed up into the wee hours, taking the game very, very... very seriously!














And then when thought we couldn't laugh more, Phil and I thought it would be a good idea to take out the sparklers we had purchased the week before in the Poconos! Um, yeah, perhaps not the wisest thing to give a group of fashnickered adults sticks spewing sparks and fire! Thankfully, the lawn in the yard suffered the worst of the burning!

The following day was spent in the Philadelphia area at my Brother Eric's house where we had to change to repeat the fun and see little Miss Madeline dance her cares away.

After a fun afternoon, Phil and I hit the road... I guess I was only half paying attention to the directions Eric gave me, and soon realized that downtown Philly was getting closer and closer, when we should not actually have seen it at all!! oops! Thankfully I lived in the area for 4 years (which of course begs the question, shouldn't I have noticed we were going in the wrong direction sooner... well, we'll have none of that thank you very much!) and I managed to get us to the PENN campus where we decided it would be a good idea to defile our systems one last time that weekend with a tasty greasy Cheese steak from Abner's.

It was a great weekend indeed!