Elevator sickness

This is my Reggae Rudolph dancin' girl! She is so cute! I'm so proud of this girl!
Okay, I will start from the beginning. Ruby takes dance from Shellie's School of Dance. The Christmas Dance concert was on Friday night. Shellie has owned and taught at this studio for 25 years. She even taught me! Now there are nine dance teachers with a gazillion students. Three of the teachers are my talented cousins. I have to tell you this concert is so magical! It has such a wonderful feeling of Christmas. The costumes are dazzling! The girls are fantastic dancers! On every single dance, the dancers knew each step. They were not watching for the teachers to show them what to do! Even the little three year-olds, they knew the dance!
So I take Ruby to the school. The plan is to take the girls back to the gym at 6:30. Doors open for the famlies to get buns in seats at 6:30. Show begins at 7. I explained this to Ruby. I am not with her 24 hours a day, all day, every day. She goes to school. She goes to dance. But she would not stay in the gym without me.!!!???? She has friends there. She had Baylee there. She had Shayla, Sara, and Dayna there. Nope. Just momma would do. So after about 40 minutes of tears, all of her stage make-up on my shirt, and I resorted to bribery, I was able to leave her there. I did good. I didn't cry in front of her. I knew she would be just fine. It was her classes turn to dance and she was right on stage, all smiles. She looked beautiful. She even got into the dance and shook her little booty. I was so elated! My mom worded the experience correctly, "I aged about 7 years that night". I've never seen her be so scared! And I could not understand it because she was with friends and family? After it was over she wanted to know when the spring concert was going to be, so she could go play in the fun play land again (the gym).



Then on Saturday we had Lew's family party. All of his brothers and sisters were there, minus one sister. His single brother even brought a hot Asian girl as a date! We went out to eat at Buca di Beppo. It was madness with that many people, but a lot of fun.

We then rode trax to Temple Square to look at the lights. That is the kids favorite part. Zane repeatedly yelled, "Bye Train"! This is a picture of our little fam. I think it is really funny for a few reasons. A. Shaniqua (aka Ruby) looks like she just got back from da hood with my NYC running cap. She is wearing mismatched gloves. Lew is wearing my scarf, while holding my sweet diaper bag. It's not visible, but Zaner is wearing pink tights under his jeans and I had to fight him to take off the Strawberry Shortcake boots. The camera tried to fix red-eye and gave me black dots at the end of my eyebrows. Then Zane and I have the same mouth. And I won't tell you what Lew is wearing under his jeans. wink, wink. (kidding)

We then went up to the Garden cafe in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building and drank hot chocolate. It was dang good stuff! This is a shot of a few of the cousins looking out over the temple.

And to make things even better... Wednesday is Lew's last final!!!! Yahooo! And he figured out that he has 8 more classes to take. The tentative graduation date is Spring of 2010!!!! yahoooo!!!