After a lot of thinking and discussions with my sister and husband, I decided that I would start a blog about my experiences as a dance mom.  I am fully aware that we have all been inundated with reality shows about dance and so called "reality".  I have raised one daughter and dancer that recently graduated and have another daughter and dancer that is currently going through the process and consequently I have learned a lot through past experiences and what I am experiencing now.  What I hope to accomplish from this blog is to help others learn, laugh, cry, or just have someone to laugh at (me).  Along with sharing my experiences I will try to find things to share that can make dance more fun, or items that can help with competition time, or sales on costumes, bags, shoes, etc......

 In this first post I just want to help you get to know me and my family.  My husband and I have been married 23 years.  We have 3 kids, Hannah, 19, Chandler, 17, Addison, 11.  Hannah started dancing at the age of 3.  The only reason she started dancing was because she had problems with her ears starting around 9 months.  She had to have tubes put in her ears 3 times and had so much gunk in there it was as if she was hearing everything under water.  She missed out on developing certain sounds while speaking and listening.  The doctor suggested enrolling her in activities that would require focus and concentration that would help her learn to develop these things she missed out on.  To this day she has some permanent hearing loss.  Anyway, after trying several different sports and dance, dance is what she took to the most.  She started dancing at The Dance Club in Orem Utah at 6 and danced there until she graduated.  In my next post I will talk about what happened on Hannah's journey.  For now, she is living in Los Angeles, attending FIDM for fashion design and currently working as a dancer.  She loves school and loves going on castings for dance and modeling.  My son Chandler is a senior in High School and is trying to decide what to do.  He has always had a love of music, and plays the guitar, saxophone, clarinet, base guitar, and upright base.  He played sports until 9th grade and much to my husbands dismay he decided to go full force with music.  My husband fully supports his music and loves watching him play in all the bands and sing in acapella.   He just loves sports too and got stuck with two dancers and a musician.  Oh well.  Chandler will be attending UVU in the fall and working towards serving an LDS mission.  Did I mention that he has been diabetic since he was a year old?  That may slow down the mission process but we are working on that.  Addison is my youngest and will attend Junior High in the fall.  She is on Junior company at The Dance Club and loves it.  She struggles with ADHD and so dance is a great resource in helping her build focusing skills, relationships, and maturity.  I know that ADHD is over diagnosed these days, however, in this case we actually fought it for years because I was determined to find a way to parent her that worked.  I thought I was a failure for not being able to help her without medication.  The parenting techniques that worked with my other two were not working for her.  There was a lot of tension, anger, sadness and frustration.  I finally took her to a specialist at the urging of teachers, family and friends and although medication has helped it is not the fix it all drug. I still have to parent, council, guide, love, and everyday is a game of what do I need to give her today to help her.  I love my Addison and she is a joy as are my other two children, I just have to do things a little differently with Addison and that is okay.  I only mention all of this because in future posts this will be an important fact in how or why I decide to do certain things.  My husband Steve has worked in special effects since he graduated college and is still working in that field in several different capacities.  

Anyway I hope that anyone reading my posts will be able to enjoy our journey through the dance world and how it has affected or been a large part of our family.  I will try to post daily if I can.  I have so much to share and it is all I can do to contain my excitement and not dump everything out in one post. For now I will post a picture of my family and start thinking about tomorrows post.