Mia's Kabaret

I have been the ultra worst blogger ever. Work, kids, life, etc are all keeping me so busy that I have no spare minutes to do the things I enjoy... like blogging. C'est la vie... Here are some photos and videos I had to post from Mia's weekend Kabaret. She was incredible! The entire show was so incredibly professional and well done. Curt and I were proud of our confident daughter who seems to have fell right into a very comfortable place in this group. Here is an overview of her show on Saturday. (by the way, she had 2 performances on Friday and 2 on Saturday).

her young fans waiting to go into the theatre

She performed 3 song / dances - all were from famous shows... I'll put down what they are in my next post.

LOVE THIS NEXT ONE. It summarizes her confident stage presence!

2 videos

My Magyar Mia

Magyar, for those of you that don't know, means 'Hungarian' in Hungarian. Mia is a Magyar girl through and through. She loves the food, culture, language and now that she's been introduced to the folk dancing, she is at home!

Earlier this week, we had the pleasure of watching her and her class on stage dancing in true traditional Hungarian style folk dance. She was so great (I thought)! The teacher did a great job and all the kids on stage seemed to be perfectly in sync and with smiles on their faces. It was so fun to watch and I can tell that they also enjoyed performing!

In the short video below, she is the 3rd girl to come out.

Mia's Dance Performance with DCA

Finally, a few more photos and a video of Mia's dance performance last week. Have so many other updates but have no time now. Curt and I are off to Geneva for some meetings in a few hours and haven't packed, prepared anything for the kids during our absence, etc.

Ciao for now....

And a short video clip. Mia is the gray cat with the bun in her hair. Don't feel bad if you cannot find her right away. I also had trouble at the beginning of the show.

Sneak Peak at Mia's Dance Recital Today

The theme was CATS. Mia did really well! And, most importantly, had a great time...

The Girls' Dance Recital at School

All year, or at least since about October, Ali was in a young dance group with her grade (3 and 4 year olds) and the class one year above her. Mia was also in a similar dance group with her age group. What I didn't realize was that they shared the same dance instructor and over the last month have been practicing together and combining their routines... I felt so lucky to have 2 little beauties in this year's dance performance at school. Mia and Ali were in the same show and it was great fun! They both were so happy to perform together and both did very well. Here are some photos and videos of their performance on Monday afternoon.

I adore these costumes! We had to pay for them but we keep them. They are just gorgeous!

Ali is in the middle in the above left as well as in the shots below, when they changed costumes.

Love her face in the above right and below left as she looks completely confused and slightly embarrassed. They were all so adorable together that it didn't matter!

These next 2 are my favorite shots of each of them. I got to try out my newest zoom lens which worked out incredible!! Terence was next to me and we were getting really excited about the shots I captured. Mia was a bit more of a challenge to get good snaps of as she was often behind other girls.

If you can't tell, Ali is right in front of Mia in this shot above.

In this next one, Mia and Ali are in the back row next to each other (towards the right of the screen).



Here Mia is in the 2nd row (right side of screen) and Ali is in the back row (towards the left). Ali looks completely confused as to what she is supposed to be doing.



This one was super short but cute. Ali starts in the front middle of the screen. You can catch a glimpse of Mia as she walks off stage in the 2nd row. She told me she was put in back most of the time as she is one of the tallest girls in her class. There was one very tall girl in the front but she was older and there helping her mother, the teacher, with the younger kids.

Ali Doing the Charleston Dance!!!

Today was Carnival (think Halloween) at the French school. You've already seen Ali's Charleston flapper costume and for an added surprise, parents were invited today to enjoy a bit of the celebration with them. It was wonderful! Honestly, I went in there with very low expectations but Ali's teacher choreographed an entire dance routine with all the kids. They were spectacular, enthusiastic and all so happy! Seriously!! I was so bummed my real camera didn't work so I only managed to capture part of the show with my Blackberry. Not very good quality but I hope you can somewhat see. She's the 2nd one from me.

They split the class in 2 groups, then they joined together where each boy partnered with a girl. Ali was so confident in her dancing and did an incredible job. Honestly, she led the boy, put his arm on her shoulder then held his other hand. She didn't have to look around to copy anyone on the steps. She knew them! I've honestly never seen her like this. She's always been my little, shy one who seemed to lack the confidence to do something like this. It was incredible. She looked amazing!! I'll have to ask around and see if anyone got a better video that I can copy as I want to see her do this over and over and over again! It was so fun. All the parents were gushing and so impressed. We are so lucky that Ali ended up with such a fantastically caring, creative teacher!! If my camera had been working I would have snapped a photo of Ali with Isabelle, her teacher, as she looked great too in her sparkly flapper dress.

End of Year School Fete

At the end of the school year, the French school always has a school party ('fete' in French). This year, due to the weather, they had to move the entire party from the planned outdoor venue to inside. It was a bit chaotic but the kids had fun. During the party, Mia's dance group (the one through school) had an onstage performance. The video is coming soon. It was so cute to watch them.

This first phoot was taken of Mia just before she went on stage. She looks so nervous!

They were asked to wear either pink or blue shirts and shorts.

Mia's Dance Recital

Last Sunday morning was Mia's end of year dance recital through her dance group called DCA (Dance Craze Academy). This is her 2nd year there and I cannot say she's a super dancer nor is it her absolute passion but she does have a lot of fun. She has a lot of friends in her dance group plus she's made loads of friends (it's in English so a lot of English speaking friends) through the program.

I didn't take the first 2 photos but they were sent to me by Wendy who has a daughter in the younger aged group. Wendy's hubby, Carl, is a manager in our cargo division.

She doesn't have a rash... All the girls wore pink and sparkly make up for the show.


Here are several short video clips of some of the performances she was in.

After the performance she received her certificate from the dance instructors.

This is the entire group on stage. On the back wall is this year's theme: Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.

Ballet Hair

Every Saturday morning Mia takes a dance class with a group called the Dance Craze Academy (DCA). She also takes dance every Monday after school from 3pm - 4pm (at school). The DCA is a great group that she's been with for 2 years now and really enjoys it. It's in English and she has a few friends from her school but she also has made friends with a lot of other kids that are American, British, Hungarian, etc. Many of Curt's and my friends' children go to DCA so Mia has met them in other social environments (bbqs, etc). Anyhow, it's a lot of fun and at the end of the year's course they put on a great show. This year's theme is something like Slumber Party or Sleep Over or something. Sandra, who runs the DCA, does a great job so I'm sure it will be fantastic.

Last Saturday they brought in a photographer to get photos of the students in their costumes. The photos will be available for parents at or around the time of the show which is a great souvenir. Last week was a bit of a hectic one for me and I missed Sandra's message about moms having to do the kids' hair at home so they would look nice in their photos. Mia went with Curt with very wild, sloppy hair. Well, we had another chance yesterday. I guess Mia's group only took half their pictures last week and the other half were done yesterday. So, I was prepared to do a nice hairstyle for Mia. I asked her to select a style that she'd like me to do and she asked for a 'real dancer's hairstyle'. She didn't know it was called a bun. I have never attempted a bun before so I went on to youtube.com and found a few helpful how-to videos. It was actually really easy! Here is how it turned out.

I was pleasantly surprised when she returned home with it still in tact (3 1/2 hrs later).