Parise Family: "Baseball, dancing, same game, it's easy...step up to the plate.."

For those of you with youngsters, you would recognize the above quote from "High School Musical 2" when Ryan and Chad are playing baseball and comparing baseball to dancing. Well, that sums up our weekend. Gabriella and Thomas finished school on Friday. Friday night was Girl Scout night at the Scranton/Wilkes Barre Yankees game (yes the farm team is located in wonderful NEPA!) Prior to the game, the girls along with their leaders (yours truly) got to parade around the field. The girls were allowed to speak into the mircophone to announce their troop number and what town they are from. I thought all of the girls in attendance would want to speak in the mircophone so we drew names. On the contrary, my co leader and I had to pull teeth and convince our daugthers to speak. And what a fine job they did! We paraded around the whole field and as we were way out where EVERYONE could see us, Gabriella decides it would be a good time to get extremely cranky because she was hot (as though she was the only one hot...my shirt was drenched with sweat!) Calmly, I told her this was NOT the place to have a major meltdown and to continue to march. Amen, she listened! Picture it: Gabriella throwing herself on the field because she's too hot. Oy! The game started at 7:00. We found the boys and other families. Thomas was already decked out with his new Yankees hat and was set for the post show fireworks. Little did he know how long he had to wait. Every 20 minutes or so the infamous question: fireworks yet? And the answer, no not yet! Finally at 10:30 pm the fireworks started. It was definitely a great way to start summer vacation! We arrived home at 11:30 pm and a few short hours later at 5:30 am woke up for....

Dress Rehearsal!

We arrived at the Scranton Cultural Center for 7:00. I volunteered to be a backstage mom which means while the other mommies are sitting and watching the girls dance, I am entertaining them backstage. This would be fine and dandy if their second dance wasn't third from the end. We were at the rehearsal until 12:45. Yes, that is over 5 hours of entertaining 18 six year old girls with coloring books, water and animal crackers! It's amazing some of those little boogers are still alive! =)

Sunday morning Tom's parents and my parents arrived for lunch. After lunch it was time to get ready for the "big show". Gabriella got all decked out in her costumes, took a few snapshots and off to theatre. She took both ballet and jazz this past year. The show was a combination of New York City and The Lion King. The first half of the show were all songs pertaining to NYC (Uptown girl, Downtown, Working 9-5, Dancing in the Streets, Singing in Central Park, One from Chorus Line, and so on). The second half were all songs from "The Lion King". Gabriella's jazz song was from Disney's "Newsies" (cute movie with excellent music...I highly recommend it!). She danced to "King of New York" and rocked! She was right on beat and didn't miss a move. Her ballet song was "The Lion Sleeps Tonight". Apparently ballet bores Gabriella as she was ahead, behind, picking her "wedgies" and at one time sighed an exasperated sigh, as though it was taking forever to get through the routine. She definitely is more into the upbeat songs and movement! I foresee tap and jazz being her dances of choice...we shall see in a few more years!

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