World Qualifier!

A lot of life has happened since last week!  First, we celebrated Grandma Betti's birthday with a fun Jazzercise class and delicious family dinner.  I can only hope to still be dancing on my birthday for the next 30+ years!

We left the following day with Evie for the New England Oireachtas (pronounced o-rock-tis), which is the regional championship for Irish Dance in Providence, RI.  Evie competed on Friday and looked very strong, but she was up against a group of 58 girls who were also talented dancers.  Her big goal was to earn a World Qualifier spot, but we knew that was a long shot since only the top 11 competitors would qualify.  Evie has been doing a dance training program this fall that has really helped with both her physical and mental preparation, so that helped her set some dancing goals in addition to her placement goals.  The day of dancing began with our alarm going off at 4am for Evie to do her hair and makeup, have some food, and get to the conference center by 6:30am to get warmed up.  Her group began their first round of dancing at 8am, their second round was at 9:30, and then their third round was at 1:45.  After the final round of dancing was done, we had to wait for the awards ceremony that started around 5:30.  The afternoon of waiting was long, but a couple of Evie's friends from McFadden came early to support her, so she had fun hanging out with them while we waited.  At the awards ceremony, when Evie's group came up, they announced the group of world qualifiers first, and we were floored to hear Evie's number called!  They went on to announce each dancer from 28th place up to 1st, and Evie ended up placing 9th in New England.  She was SO happy, and we were crying as we watched her on stage.  She really committed to preparing for this competition, doing her exercises every day in addition to dance classes, even on days when she had a lot of homework or didn't feel like it, and the consistency of her hard work paid off.  We will head to Chicago in March with Evie for the World Irish Dance Championships!!  We stayed in Providence to cheer on the other McFadden dancers on Saturday, which was also a long, but fun day.

Frankie wasn't so sure about us packing up to leave again

Off to a great start - ha ha!

We had a great hotel room with plenty of room for all the dance gear!

King sized bed for Evie!

Calf muscle contest

4am wig styling

Pretending to be awake at 4am

Anna the gnome has become the McFadden mascot!

Oof. The 4am wakeup has caught up with her!

World Qualifiers!

Meanwhile, at home, Noah stayed with Grandma and Grandpa so he could go to school and basketball practice, and then he had his first school dance on Friday and his first basketball game of the season on Sunday.  He was underwhelmed with the school dance, telling us that 2 hours is WAY too long for a school dance, and that they didn't have enough snacks (ha ha!).

We closed out the weekend with a stop at Tufts University in Boston to watch our nephew Stefan's soccer team, who was playing in the NCAA DIII soccer tournament.  Unfortunately the game ended with a loss, but it was VERY exciting!  While we were at the game, we also got to watch the live video of our niece Aristea competing in her region's Irish Dance competition in Washington...and she WON!  What an exciting weekend for everyone!  We loved every minute of it, but now we are very glad to be home for a relaxing week and a break from travel for a bit.

Watching Aristea's dance while watching Stefan's soccer game!