ADA Dance Competition
Dayton Convention Center

I absolutely hate waking up to find out that the roads are bad. It doesn't help to hear such news on the morning you are supposed to be in Dayton (60 miles away) for a dance competition and you have a schedule you have to meet. The girls and I loaded the car quickly and headed out at 6:35 AM in hopes of making it to Dayton by 8 AM. It's not like I would have stopped and filled the tank last night, no, I had to wait and do it on the way out. We pulled out of the gas station at 6:45 AM and prayed that we would make it in time.

For the most part, the roads just seemed wet. We passed an accident near Rt. 28 in Milford and a car of the road near Loveland, but the traffic kept moving. I jumped off the highway at Rt. 42 and cut up to Tylersville to grab 75 north (I hate getting on 75 at the 275 interchange, it is such a mess even on a good day). As we approached Middletown, the skies opened and dropped an icy mix everywhere. Luckily it seemed the roads had been pretreated, yet we passed another car that was off the road. The icy mix halted as we approached 675 in Dayton, but we had the misfortune of getting BEHIND a salt truck...talk about wrecking havoc on your visibility!

We pulled up in front of the convention center at 7:58 AM and I quickly unloaded the girls, Will and assorted dance costumes and accesories and I began the great search for a parking spot. The van wouldn't make the clearance for any of the nearby garages so I ended up finding a spot on the street. Luckily the meters weren't in effect on the weekends, so I didn't have to worry about going out and feeding the meter. I was a bit perplexed though because many meters said 1 hr or 2 hr parking only (posted on a sign on the street) and I couldn't decide if the sign applied even when the meters weren't operating. I opted on the side of caution and went over a couple of blocks and found 10 hr parking.....so I knew we were going to be there 13 hours or so, but I figured no cop would be on patrol long enough to spot my van within the 10 hr. contraints!

Once I got into the convention center the madness began! Hannah quickly dressed for her jazz number and I helped Emily put the finishing touches on her makeup for her ballet number. The morning was pure madness.....6 of our 9 dances fell within 3 hours...it was rather hectic getting everyone ready. Emily just about melted down after her duet. I quickly fed her and tried to refocus her. It didn't help that her teacher made a comment about her lipstick bleeding, Em is so sensitive to comments like that. We got through the first set of awards and the pace slowed down.....unfortunately Hannah's solo was almost the 1st thing after the second award ceremony (she went on stage at 6:15 PM) and we had to hang around until 9:15 PM for awards to start!

Hannah was really excited because one of the former teachers from the studio was at the competition to watch. Angela left the studio to go dance on Broadway. The owner of the studio was upset when she left because she thought that she would be returning to teach after her stint on Broadway but she didn't come back. There was a lot of tension because some people were talling the kids should talk to her because of that. How childish can you get? Hannah of course ran up and hugged her and was thrilled that she was going to see her perform, after all she had done the original choreography for her tap solo! Hannah got a high silver on her solo!

After Hannah preformed, we got to hang out, it was nice because I got to touch base with a lot of the moms I don't get to see very often. There is a lot of tension at our studio right now and it was nice to hear how the other moms felt about it. Plus it is always nice to glean new information or to confirm information that is circling about!

The big excitement of the day was that production hiphop "Sign Up!" got ULTIMATE GOLD! The kids got a huge trophy and $250...not much when you divide it by the 40 kids on the team, but it really got the kids PSYCHED!

Our drive home was worse than the drive up.....falling snow made for slick roads, salt thrown up unto the windshield made for horrible visibility and traffic was bumper to bumper (at 10 PM on a Saturday) for over half the trip home. Add to that that I HATE driving at night. We made decent enough time given the road conditions though!