Life is still in the dance.

It's nice to finish a two and a half hour long dance practice feeling like you haven't worked that hard. I am now dancing a good five hours once a day each week of Irish Dance. And believe me, it is tiring. For two of those hours, I'm just dancing, but for the other three, I'm instructing groups of young dancers. I'm not sure which is more exhausting, actually dancing, or getting a bunch of kids to behave while trying to teach them new steps and dances.

Today I had the opportunity of dancing for two and half hours with a group of kids who were all at my level of dance, or higher, and I didn't have to tell anyone to do anything. I had to stop myself on several occasions from shushing the group up. I instinctively say "Shhh!" now every time any dancer says anything, because I'm so used to having to quiet down a bunch of rowdy kids who aren't paying attention to the teacher. Admittedly, we were not the most quiet group of dancers today. We talked a lot more than we probably needed to, but this was only because we were all getting excited about all of our new choreographies. And even when we did start making noise over our teacher she was always there to make us quiet again.

When I realized that I didn't have to be in charge of this small group of performers and that my teacher was perfectly capable of handling all of us...I really enjoyed myself!

This extra practice was for a small performance group my teacher has started for her more advanced students. The age range is pretty wide. I'm like one of the oldest people there and the youngest people in the group are probably ten or eleven. Pretty much everyone, except for the couple of girls who were from my class as well, were people I had not met yet and it was really encouraging to see just how much talent our dance school has acquired!

The best part of the day though was stepping outside into the sunshine where it was warm and breezy enough to be spring! Beautiful weather makes everything more beautiful! And then the day came to a wonderful close in the piano practice rooms where I got a good solid hour of practice in. On Saturdays the piano majors don't have scheduled practice times, so I can stay there as long as I want and play.

It's not often I get to be this tired, to have worked this hard. And it's even more rare that I end the day happy knowing that I gained as much as I worked for. Thank you, God, for a wonderful day!