All right, I get it--pictures in a blog post equals comments. I can't remember the last time I got five comments on a post. I get it, but I don't "get" it, as evidenced by the lack of photos in this post.
One of the highlights of my Nebraska trip that I failed to mention in my last post: after Easter dinner with David's family, the girls did wedding stuff (David's sister just got engaged), and the boys retired to the living room to be entertained by David's 18-month-old nephew.
David's brother set out the keyboard, which the toddler has learned to turn on and then press the right button to start the built-in music. Then he'd dance around in that cute, bouncy toddler way, but every 30 seconds or so he would freeze, tensing up every muscle in his body, including his hands and face. He'd stay like that for a few seconds, then start dancing again. It was basically the most adorable thing ever.
I love little kids. I also like older kids, and in the last week I got to see a bunch of tweens prance around in more organized performances. First was my niece's dance competition. When I made plans to attend, I thought it was a recital where I'd get to see her a bunch of times, or else I probably wouldn't have gone. It turned out to be an all-day competition--when we arrived they were on group 117 of the day or something like that; Abbi's troupe was #139.
Each group only got to dance to one song or part of a song, and they moved through the teams quite rapidly. I still had time to notice some highlights. The most entertaining thing was watching the coaches, who sat right in front of their squads, mimicking the choreography as much as they could from a seated position and making up for their lack of locomotion with overexaggerated facial expressions.
One out of every three or so groups had one or two boys in it, and it was fun to see how they chose to showcase them. My final favorite part (the dancers I saw ranged in age from 7-ish to 16-ish, and the performance quality was decent to pretty good relative to their experience, I'd say) was watching each group exit the "stage" the basketball court at Salt Lake Community College. Most of them seemed to have devoted significant practice time to walking away. I saw a lot of good strutting.
A few days later, I took the 11-year-old Scouts to see one of their fellow patrol members in his school's production of Taming of the Shrew. We got there just as it was starting and had to sit in the back of the hall; it's a good thing I knew the story already, because only a couple of the kids projected well enough for us to hear them. There was very little acting, mostly just standing on stage and reciting memorized lines, but it was still fun. Plus, they almost entirely eliminated the B plot (Bianca and her suitors), so the whole thing only lasted about an hour.
So, the leaders of today's youth are teaching them to strut, and that women should be obedient to their husbands in all circumstances. These are clearly important things to know, but maybe not as important as teaching them "to love another, and to serve one another," and "to walk in the ways of truth and soberness" (Mosiah 4:15), as covered in this week's Sunday School lesson. Once you're finished the assigned reading, and your kids have mastered those principles (which is actually part of becoming the children of Christ--see Mosiah 5:7), you'll have earned some strutting time.
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