My Beautiful Ballerinas

Cassandra as ballerina.

Spring 2008 - just turned 6 years old.

Isabella as ballerina.

Spring 2016-  soon to be 6 years old.

One brunette, one blond - 

both the most beautiful ballerinas I have ever seen!!

Ballet Performance

After posting the pictures of my little ballerina, I realized that I didn't add the pictures from their little  "performance", so here they are!

Bella Ballerina

Isabella was only able to take ballet lessons for about a month. The teacher's orders moved up and will now PCS (Permanent Change of Station) earlier than expected. So, therefore, she had to quit giving lessons. A typical military life scenario that no one can do anything about, still very annoying for the ones that get affected by it..

With that said, they didn't really have an performance, but just showed off the last 15 minutes of the last lesson what they had learned and as dressing up pretty for the performance is a big thing when you are 5 years old, I made sure to help her transform into the pretties ballerina that I've ever seen, (with a tie with Cassandra when she was a ballerina at the same age!)

My Little Ballerina

Isabella has started to dance ballet. It's not easy to find activities here on Okinawa for little kids that are not too pricey and the waiting list for dance/gymnastic/cheer leading etc on base is long.

I was happy to find out that a lady was having dance lessons in her tower's party room here on our base. She charges only half of what the big group dance lesson would charge down on the big base, and for twice a week instead of only once a week. So win win for us, plus that it's 5 minutes from our house, and it works to get to in time, after school. The kids come back to our bus stop around 3.30pm and then we walk home. At home, changing over, eat a snack and we are just ready to be at the lesson that start at 4pm. So now I signed up Isabella for the later class 4-4.50pm every Monday and Wednesday afternoon. In April they will have a performance, so it will be fun to practice for!

Isabella like many little girls, have been dancing/twirling around here at home pretending to be a little ballerina, so it was fun to find this option, and when they ware so young, it doesn't have to be an expensive dance school, as they don't do much more than little steps and very little choreography to keep the focus on having fun!

Here are some pictures from her first class, we have not yet found ballet shoes, as it's not as easy here to just walk into a shoe store at the mall to get them like in the US. All the ballerina clothes, we already had, hand me downs from Cassandra's dancing days! Online ordering can take some time, so I have heard that a little shoe store down south of the island might have some, specializes in dance wear, so I hope we can check it out this weekend.

A little "Duck duck goose" in the end, waiting for the parents!

She did very well for being her first time!! As it was the first time for the class, it was a little disorganized and some kids were more interested than others, but it has already now after having had it three times, gotten better. Parents are not allowed to stay in the room while the class is ongoing, as there is very little room to sit and many kids are getting distracted with parents and siblings around.