Boo's recital

Boo and Skibo have been doing gymnastics almost their whole lives (in fact, Skibo's been attending since the week he was born, although he didn't actually get into a class until he was one): and they have performed in a show already.
But today was something rather more showily staged (I toyed with "professionally" or "classily" but neither adjective achieved the purpose I want). She's been taking ballet lessons for a year, and today was the big recital: she had one ballet number and one tap. First let me say, she did wonderfully well, including and especially the beautiful moment at the end of the ballet piece when all of the other dancers had left the stage and she had a fraction of a second just standing there in the spotlight: it was gorgeous (and a photo will follow soon).
Organizationally, however, we left dissatisfied. The show was supposed to start at 4, and we thought, including the intermission, we ought to be out by 6, and surely they'll have the little children's pieces first so that if need be, they can leave at the intermission. Not to be: ballet in the first half, tap in the second half.
Second, the show was nearly twenty-five minutes late in starting: we didn't even get to the intermission until almost five thirty! And Boo's tap number was the ninth piece in the second half, and I had a six thirty meeting to get to (fortunately only five minutes walk from the theatre). Keeping an eye on my watch, trying to determine whether Skibo wanted to come with me or stay with our friend L (LOML was sitting down at the front with Boo): in the end, they whipped through enough of the second half that I could stay for her performance, run out front of the theatre and jog over to my meeting just a couple of minutes late. All of the parents of the thirty or so small children were fuming, especially when the owner of the dance studio berated parents for leaving half way through the second half --- which I do understand: it is very rude and not done: but at the same time, there were those of us there with three and four and five year olds who had just sat through two and a half hours of waiting and dancing; far more than that age group can easily handle.

Boo and Skibo and LOML and L stayed for the whole of the show, then drove over to pick me up from my meeting . I would have driven separately had I realised just how long the show was going to last: but I didn't, and so I didn't.

Skibo was a trooper about the whole thing: by the end he was falling asleep on his feet: enough so that we almost couldn't go out for the promised post-performance pizza after all: LOML and I decided that it was important to try to do so, though, and the pizza feast was great. And we got to give Boo her special dinner out to celebrate her first ballet performance!

Yours, singing praises and kudos to Boo and to Skibo today,
N.