Early in December, some dear friends joined us for a free historic dance at the Old Courthouse in St. Louis. I was so happy we could do this.
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| Old Courthouse St Louis MO |
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| aerial view |
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 how do you like Sam's new wheels? The second weekend in December found us attending an International ball with several friends. It was difficult to choose what costumes to wear; we have so many folk dance costumes. |
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| Nikola and Jessie: Bangladesh and Spain |
Sara, Nikola and Jessie
sisters- love these girls!
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| Marilyn (seated) came from Michigan to join in on the fun. Trust a costume designer to come up with the perfect blend of traditional and fashionable. |
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| watching dance demonstrations from the comfort of the floor |
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| Elodie donned Nikola's Serbian outfit. I wanted to wear mine (from a different region of Serbia) but since I've already worn it to 3 balls I decided to give one of my less popular outfits a chance. :) |
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| ''you dare take my photograph?"" |
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| Irish Washerwoman |
some folkses
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| Friends! I love being with these girls! Isn't it great how we are able to do things as families? Imagine not being friends with people 10 years younger than yourself. That would be awful. |
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| representing the Beyond the Mask team! A group of unique individuals and friends |
Oh, Marilyn!
I love that costume.
Of course Marilyn couldn't resist the lovely piano...
Only a couple days after the dance, we went to the Burnses home for an annual tradition: cookie-making for the season. It's really just an excuse to talk for hours but we call it ''cookie-making day'' anyway.
And then we close the evening with dancing. This was the best dancing time so far.
We mastered Laura's Waltz. And I mean mastered. Now each of us has sufficient knowledge to walk anyone through it! I finally even know the gentleman's part.
We were too excited to remember to film, but here is Andrew's version of that beautiful dance:
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| folding napkins |
friends
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| the boys took some of their valuable time to be with us a bit. |
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| highlight: meeting the newest granddaughter!!! Eve Burns So beautiful. Also in December: A Civil War ball at the Old Courthouse! |
Nikola polka-ing with Papa
Thank you so much, Wong family for coming with us to this event!
That same day, we went to a small going-away party for a friend. Of course we had a bit of dancing
This year we went to St. Charles by ourselves. (as you may have assumed, we usually go with friends.) We always have a lot of fun walking around together. Sometimes too much fun....?
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| ''like the ceiling can't hold us!" jk. ;) |
Sam and I were waiting in my favourite alley for the rest of the family who were in the delightful shop of ice creams and other poisons. Papa, for some reason had gotten left behind and we were supposed to be waiting for him. As it turned out, he walked right past our alley. But that was because we were slightly distracted. And that is besides the point.
Sam climbed the walls between the ice cream shop and the shop next door. The first time, he nearly made it to facebook (or whatever is popular right now) fame because a random group of young people stopped in awe.
But the very girl who hastily scrambled for her i-phone (or whatever people use nowadays) to snap a picture couldn't help first screaming (and I mean scream) ''Oh my! Spiderman!'' And of course that jostled spiderman and he came down speedily. (not dangerously: Belleys never do anything dangerously. Just quickly)
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| I love this hawk! He enjoys keeping around our place on account of the chickens. Future feasts, he hopes. |
This is awkward, but this time, our family did our New Years Eve celebration on December 30th. The Chinese food (boughten and homemade. Homemade is way better by the way ;)), movies....
Only we didn't shout ''Happy New Year'' at midnight. I assure you.
One person (Katia or Laura-Lise?) grabbed some Oriental garb so the rest of us felt obliged to follow suit.
We watched The Ugly Dachshund and once the little ones were in bed, the rest of us (so many now! As in 9 of us!) watched the ''big movie''...Battle of the Bulge.
The cast wasn't phenomenal (to Belleys at least), but it was a good representation
(I hope. I haven't studied it yet) of the battle and made me want to study it further.
Speaking of actors, we were tickled that our ''favourite'' actor John MacArthur showed up in the movie.
Inside joke.
But I will explain. We never liked him in Swiss Family Robinson. And yet he is in so many Disney movies as well as all sorts of random films we have watched. Kind of our fate.
It's just one of those family jokes.
In this film, there was an odd mixture of MacArthur, Fonda and Bronson. Hm. But it's the story that was interesting.
Umm....I must explain that we do stockings on Jan. 1st every year. And so this time we did them Dec. 31st. Makes sense?
That's alright. I don't think it was supposed to.
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| morning smiles :) |
New Years Eve night, we went to a lovely dance some friends hosted. It was the first time we'd danced the old year away and the New Year in!
We ended 2013 with Duke of Kent's Waltz and then had prayer time for about 10 minutes.
Can you guess what the first dance of 2014 was? Laura's Waltz! Splendid.
Speaking of Laura...this isn't Laura's Waltz (rather Hull's Victory) but I love this one of Mr.and Mrs. H.
We did all our favourite dances: Hole in the Wall, Hull's Victory, Barbarini's Tambourine, Bare Necessities, etc.
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Our family got to get re-acquainted with the Ascher family, who we were great friends with over 14 years ago! It's so neat updating friendships like that! :)
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| Bare Necessities |
I was about to post my photos from the Courthouse dance too!
ReplyDeleteWould you rather that I don't post photos of your family on our PUBLIC blog anymore?
As of late, I've been trying to weed out people's names from my posts (especially last names.) As far as I know, the internet gossips have never linked to our blog.
Great pictures, as always!
ReplyDeleteHee hee, I like your note about what cookie day *really* is! I sort of suspected that... ;)
I'm glad you all mastered Laura's Waltz - now we just have to get used to doing stars instead of turns, right? :] (Does it bother you as well to realize that we've been dancing it and The Ragg incorrectly all this time?!) And then there's the hey for four, which can be done slightly differently than I learned it... argh... ;]
Oh Zoe..do we HAVE to do stars? So many dances already have stars, I think I'd rather do turns like we learnt it. I agree that it would be annoying to do a dance wrong if it were historic. But Laura's Waltz was created in the 2000's! :)I think we're allowed to play with it.
ReplyDeleteBut what do you think would be nicer? Stars or turns?
In both cases I am ENTIRELY in favor of turns. As you said, there's a million and one dances with stars already, so doing something a bit different is nice. In the Ragg especially I like the turns because it gets the "set twice" in at a portion of the music perfectly suited to setting, whereas a left hand star there would be pretty dull.
ReplyDeleteBUT: I still AM somewhat irked that I learned it differently than how it was originally written, thinking that it was "the right way".
Then again, you have a point regarding the recent composition of Laura's Waltz... even though The Ragg is from about 1726!!!...
Well, regional embellishments and variations are expected, so I guess it's not that bad - especially considering that our interpretations are more enjoyable than the originals anyway! ;)