On Friday I took Ally to South Bend to watch her first baton competition. They have made some changes to the competition and they have now crammed 5 days worth of events into 4 days so I decided to make the trip up for the finals. This was my 20th AYOP and my 6th year as a spectator. I can honestly say I never thought I would take my own daughter there so it was quite the experience!
Now that we live further away, we made a stop in Lafayette and spent Thursday night there and then went up in the morning so we weren't driving all 5 hours in one day. We were able to see Whitney compete in the twirl offs, the corps finals and several of the exhibition performances. Of course Notre Dame was experiencing a major air conditioning failure on the hottest day of the year so the arena was easily over 100 degrees. Everyone was so incredibly hot, especially all the babies but Ally was a trooper. In addition to seeing some great twirling, we also got to catch up with some old friends and Ally got to meet lots and lots of people. She was her usual adorable self so we got stopped by many moms asking if she was a future Miss Majorette or future Golden Girl. It was great to meet up with my friend Rachael (Socially Inappropriate Mom) and meet her baby Daisy, see Jenny O and her two girls and to see all the girls on the team looking so grown up. Most of them don't remember me since I taught most of them when they were 4 or 5! Obviously it would have been much more enjoyable if it hadn't been so unbearably hot and moving so slowly but we saw what we needed to see and made it back to Lafayette by 1am.
I have been asked several times since Ally was born if she was going to twirl and my response has always been "if she wants to". Maybe I can show her a few things when she gets old enough and then she can make an informed decision but its hard to imagine not having her go to the studio where I grew up so we need to find a way back to Oshkosh before that time comes! I certainly don't want to be starring in an episode of Toddlers & Tiaras but I wouldn't mind having her learn what it means to be dedicated and work hard and to have something to show for it...like a Miss Majorette title or a college scholarship. Daddy might think otherwise but we will just take it one step at a time :)
A side note: ND has gone through a major renovation and did some things that will be similar to what Mackey will look like soon. They did a great job with the history of the school and all of the images around the arena, and the seating area itself is a huge improvement. I couldn't resist taking a few pictures of Ally by some famous/infamous landmarks but you can be sure I was telling her "you may see a few football games here, but you will never go to school here". These were taken on my phone so they are pretty poor quality.
No comments:
Post a Comment