Let Everything That Has Breath Praise the Lord

That was the title of the song that Ella danced to in church this morning. She was part of a group of 3-6 year olds that did a four week worship dance class with Renee K. and then performed in church today.

Ella loves to dance. She dances all around the house and makes up all sorts of moves. But she's never been to great about following along during her dance class. Occassionally she'll do the moves, but the majority of the time she's marching to the beat of a different drum. But she likes it and looks forward to it so we encourage her to have fun with it and keep reminding her that she's dancing for Jesus.

I pretty much knew what to expect this Sunday. I knew that Ella would not really do the routine. She would do a few moves and then get distracted and do her own thing and then start watching Renee again and following the dance. I thought she would probably stand there and play with her scarf or her dress (I had many many talks about not lifting up her dress and I'm very thankful that it got through to her). I honestly thought she would be pretty subdued. In that sense I was very suprised - for about 10 minutes before church she was running around on stage with the other kids and then in the minute or two before it actually started she was jumping up and down in her spot. As far as how she did - I was right on.

I was determined not to laugh. I had laughed extremely hard during the dress rehearsal which was five minutes before the actual performance. I figured I got it all out and I knew what Ella was going to do or not do. But as the music started Renee whispered for the girls to "smile" and Ella proceeded to give her famous "Pirate Smile" looking back and forth for about fifteen seconds. For those of you who don't know Ella's pirate smile, I've included a picture....







Now, that was over a year ago and it's not so extreme these days, but that is often the way Ella smiles when you actually tell her to smile. Now usually if you tell her to say "cheese" she'll give you a relatively normal smile.

So as soon as the pirate smile came out I lost it. I basically laughed (silent, shaking, tears rolling down face laughter) the whole way through the dance. I have to say that she did a great job in getting up there and just having fun. I wasn't sure if she would go through it because she sometimes gets very shy or scared in new situations, and being up on stage in front of alot of people was certainly new.

If after all that you still are interested in watching, I was able to download it to google video. The quality on our camera is good but for some reason it didn't transfer that great. I used a new program and might have to fiddle with it a bit.

A couple of things to notice...
- The laughter you hear is mostly from our one pastor's mom sitting behind me. She loves Ella to death and said it reminded her of watching her grand daughter do ballet. I know she was really trying to hold it in (because she too had watched the dress rehearsal and giggled through that and we talked about trying to hold it in next time).
- Ella singing praise the Lord - with the emphasis on Lord.
- A little yawn somewhere in the middle
- How beautiful they all looked and how good the others did.
- The lovely choreography by Renee.

Now for your viewing pleasure.....