Saturday, March 29, 2008

Platinum!

I rarely blog about anything but my portrait photography business, but today something really exciting happened and I just can't help but share. My portrait studio space is located inside a wonderful dance studio in Shawnee called the Academy of the Arts, and the owner of that studio is my business partner, Tonya Ebner. My 9-year-old daughter has danced there for 6 years.

Tonya has a small but dedicated and fun group of girls who perform on her competitive dance team (including my daughter and her two girls). They all work very hard, and have so much fun together. Today was the girls' first dance competition and their production number - which consists of the entire team (except for a few tiny ones) won a Platinum award! That is the highest award they can win and they do not come around very often. They also won First Overall among the Junior Large Groups - about 20 of them. And, the coaches of that team - Krystin Quilty Sanford, and Carly Prenger, won a special choreography award. It's a really interesting routine, called "Nightmare Mix," of different dance styles, including my favorite - haunted ballerinas(!) -- all performed to a mix of scary songs.

What an exciting day for our team, and our coaches (and us parents, too!), and such a fun way to start out our competition season. We are all so proud of our girls!