ALL-AMERICAN

 Saturday night at the National Dance Competition at Lagoon they have an awards ceremony.  We have never stayed for it before.  We always just let our dance teacher gather any trophies the groups earn.  These past 2 years though we have paid for Oakley to "dance off" on Friday after her regular events.  That just means that if she got a 1st place on any individual event she can re-dance them to try and get a place on the ALL-AMERICAN CLOGGING TEAM! It is a HUGE title and a HUGE accomplishment and something EVERY CLOGGER wants! Last year we didn't have any luck and we had tears on the way home so this year we decided we would dance off again but we were doing it "just for the experience of it" and not hoping for the all-American prize.  So we went into it with that attitude and because of that we once again didn't stay for the awards ceremony we were just happy for the experience. 

About 10:30 Saturday night, just after I tucked kids into their beds at the hotel room I got a call on my cell phone.  It was one of the other dance moms and there was some MAJOR SCREAMING, CELEBRATING going on.  She yells, "Where is Oakley? She needs to be on stage RIGHT NOW!! She just got an ALL-AMERICAN AWARD!!" Oakley had just gone into the bathroom AT THE HOTEL to get into the shower! I stuck my head in the bathroom and told her the good news and she did the cutest little cheerleader fist-pump and yahoo yell you've ever seen! We were bummed we hadn't stayed for the ceremony but SO EXCITED!! We went down to the lobby at the hotel and bought snickers ice cream bars and hid out in the bathroom to celebrate! :)

With the All-American title comes a jacket! Oakley's cute little clogging teacher and one of her teammates met us at the dance studio just a couple days later and did their own little celebration!! You don't even know how much I love Oakley's teacher!! She is SOOO MUCH more than just a dance teacher!! She loves these girls and they know it and that goes A LONG WAYS!!  

Look at those smiles!!!

She has worked so hard this year and deserves this title/jacket!! Her teacher and 3 of her teammates also got All-American titles but all in different events.  We are so proud of all of them!! The way it works is in each individual event they pick the top 5 or 6 dancers in their division (which Oakley is in the Champ division) and give those top dancers this All-American title.  So Oakley got it in her Line and Show solo.  So out of the 10 spots available for those 2 solos Oakley took 2 of them out of 100+ girls! Incredible!! Soooo proud of her!!