Daddy Daughter Dance

Yesterday my little princess and I went to our first daddy-daughter dance. We had a blast! Carly was especially excited! The evening started off with some light refreshments for everyone, some tiaras for the girls (a wonderful sister there put up Carly's hair and put on her tiara), and some ice-breaking activities for the couples. :-) Carly was especially fond of the watermelon and cupcakes. Though she was eager to get to the dancing. After the treats we marched around the building in pairs playing follow the leader, which was a lot of fun! The next activity was a great little game where everyone except one person sat in a circle. The person walked up to one person in the circle and asked "Who do you love?" The person asked would then respond by saying something like "red-heads", and then everyone identified would have to stand up and change seats. It was a lot of fun! Carly was really excited whenever she had the chance to jump up and run around screaming trying to find a seat! :-) A lot of the little girls there were really eager to be asked "Who do you love?", though they would often freeze up when asked. :-) So I took it upon myself to make valuable suggestions like: "How about anyone with male-pattern baldness?" (I was thinking of my dad, several uncles and friends, and our old pet dog, Rufus.)

After that very enjoyable activity the dance itself got kicked off. I had more fun at this dance than I've ever had at any other dance...ever! A large part of that had to do with the fact that, although there were quite a few cute girls there, none of them were my age, and my date really enjoyed my company! :-) Also, it was probably the first dance where I had heard every single song before the dance! (Of course, most of the songs were from disney princess movies. You should have heard all the little girls when they played the song from Frozen!) Carly and I danced to every song, in a variety of combinations of a basic two-step, a box step, and some swing. And she loved being spun around! Towards the end I was sweating so much from so much energetic dancing that I had to take my glasses off! And Carly simply loved it! She was screaming and squealing with delight the whole time! And what really made me feel good was that she was having so much fun dancing with me! In fact, when most of the girls started dancing in circles and bunny hopping around and whatnot while their dads cheered them on, Carly kept wanting to just dance with me. :-) Towards the end I was starting to get pretty winded and even offered to take her to get some ice cream if she wanted (hint, hint, leave early), and her reply each time was something to the effect of: "Yeah, that would be great! Let's do that when the dance is over!" :-)

Nevertheless, I was still sad when the dance ended. Because we had had such a great time. And, the cherry on top was when they game me a little gift basket for being the newest dad in the Ward. :-) Then we went and got some ice cream. And the entire time Carly was talking about how much fun she had had, and how much she loved dancing (this was her first dance), and how much fun the church is, and how she wanted to go to every daddy-daughter dance!

Yes, last night my prayers were filled with gratitude for the wonderful church-members who had organized, planned, prepared, and carried out my daughter's first dance! :-)