The Nutcracker and "Fancy Brunch"

My little ballerina Blake and I had the special joy this year of going to a performance of The Nutcracker with her Nana and her Ami. She's so lucky to have both grandmothers living so close by to do fun stuff like this whenever we want. I took ballet classes throughout elementary school and was in drill team in high school so I was just as excited to go to the performance as she was if not more. The Nutcracker is always a great ballet, but this performance was really, really great. It was the Texas Ballet Theater performing at Bass Hall in Fort Worth. It was magical and beautiful and we all had such a good time! One of my favorite parts of the whole thing was seeing all of the little girls dressed up for the occasion. Apparently I wasn't the only mom who had the idea that her 4-year-old was at about the right age to enjoy getting all fancy and going to the ballet at Christmastime. There were tons of little girls there and they all looked adorable. Blake really enjoyed wearing her fancy new clothes. I wrapped up a new dress, tights, gloves and coat for her with some nutcracker and ballet Christmas ornaments attached to the ribbon and put the packages out in front of her room for her to see and unwrap first thing when she got up that morning (she's really into getting herself all dressed from head-to-toe first thing when she wakes up in the morning right now, but that's another post entirely). We also went to brunch that day in Fort Worth at a place called Bistro Louise which was really great. We were celebrating Karen's birthday that day too so Chris, Emma and Danny joined us for brunch before the rest of us went on to the ballet. Even though the brunch place wasn't all that super fancy, Blake is pretty much convinced that brunch is a very fancy event because we were all dressed up for the ballet and just for the heck of making it a special day. Even Emma was pretty fancy in her dress and faux fur wrap that was one of my favorite hand-me-downs from Blake. So now many of Blake's pretend play scenarios include her and her imaginary prince or her and her imaginary kids or whatever the case may be getting dressed up to go to brunch. It cracks me up every time. What a special day! I hope we can make it a tradition and Emma can join us when she's old enough.