Wedding Week: Learning to Dance

Having Mark home with us for a week was a gift.  I guess he had taken the time off for the reunion-that-wasn't, but when that didn't happen, he didn't change his schedule.  Again, what a gift.  

After Glo arrived on Wednesday, and we had our reunion on Thursday, we waited for Gordon to arrive on Saturday.  Mark and Glo headed out in the morning for a run.

Hannah and I had been itching to go see the Barbie movie, and while Mark had already seen it, the four of us decided to watch it before Gordon arrived that Saturday evening.

Evidently, you can't go to a Barbie movie without wearing Barbie pink so while I just pulled something out of my schrank, the kids wanted to go to Hot Topic to find something appropriate.  Good on them, because they came out with the cutest things.  (To be honest, light pink is probably my second favorite color so I'm very biased.)  Even Mark found a darling pink Gorillaz t-shirt, and coupled with Glo's Barbie t-shirt and Hannah's strawberry milk sweatshirt, we were ready to go!

I loved the movie.  We all loved the movie.  And we cried several times through it.

Afterwards, we went to HopCat for dinner which actually was less salty than I remembered and quite delicious.

And then we FINALLY got to pick up Gordon from the airport.  Bless his heart, despite Glo telling him where we would meet him, he ended up at the departures lane instead of the baggage claim, but in the end, he found us.  Shoot, it was so good to see him again!

Gordon had mentioned to me a few days before that he doesn't know how to dance.  I could completely sympathize with him.  Being surrounded by family members who ALL dance, who LOVE to dance, and who dance REALLY well, I can clearly see my own inadequacy in the dance department, and this despite feeling the music in my soul.  For me, I wish someone at some point had given me a few simple dance moves that could keep me out on the dance floor (a la "Hitch"), but instead I just usually feel as if I'm flailing when the fast music comes on.

The last thing I wanted was for Gordon to feel uncomfortable at his own reception while his newly-minted wife is breaking it down to Bruno Mars, so I took matters into my own hands.  We practiced dancing with Gordon and the Kennedy dancers.

We turned on music in the family room, and the kids showed Gordon just some really simple dance steps.  At first it wasn't even about the steps--it was about getting Gordon to feel the rhythm of the music and to match that rhythm with his feet.  But eventually, he figured out how to move to the music.

Then it was on to practicing his slow dance with Glo.  Like the Suzuki method, it was just taking one principle and building on that.  At one point, I had Mark take Gordon in a dance hold to teach him how to lead.

I have to admit, it was a really fun evening.  Seeing again how good my kids are naturally at dancing is always fun, and it was encouraging to see Gordon making progress.  We practiced a few more times throughout the week, and I knew Gordon would be good to go on the wedding day.