On POINTE!

I cannot believe I am writing this post. Our ten-year-old, Abigail, is going to be getting her first pointe shoes on Tuesday!

Here she is. My little lady ... many years ago ...

Here is the very first video I have of her "doing" ballet. This is the day after her fourth birthday in July of 2015. She had begged us, of her own accord to start ballet. When we moved to Greeneville, it was the first thing we did. She was ecstatic about going (as you can tell from the video):

The only issue is, our little Abigail was the absolute shyest little kid you have EVER met. I've written about this on the Blog at length. But THANK GOODNESS for the Director, LoriAnn Sparks. She is an introvert and understands introverts and was the perfect person for Abigail. I think you can tell how "focused" Abigail was on ballet from the moment she started, and as long as LoriAnn was with her, she was okay:

And here we are on Thursday, the class where Ms. LoriAnn was going to do a final "observation" to determine if she was ready to get her infamous shoes:

Always has been incredibly flexible.

Chatting with her friend, Alyssa, during stretch time. 

Her cousin, Kari, is going to get her own shoes at the same time as Abigail. We have an appt. on Tuesday to drive to Asheville where there is a ballet store that they can get their shoes. I'm slightly concerned because Abigail is growing SO much that she will grow out of these shoes super fast (and they are NOT cheap!) but for a dancer, going on pointe is a right of passage. We don't have a lot of these "moments" for kids now-a-days so I'm super excited to see my excited kid get to do this.

Ms. Erin is here with us. She was a professional dancer, and so this is an extra special time because she join us for this BIG event!

Kids growing up everywhere ... what a mixed bit of emotion!