Strauss Festival with my girly

Every year, Elk Grove has this festival where dancers perform beautiful ballroom type dances on Strauss Island. It is free to the public (other than parking), you can just bring a blanket or camping chair and watch the evening.

Alana and Brayden's piano teacher had two of her sons in the show and offered for us to sit with her on her blankets down near the front so Alana and I decided to go on a mommy-daughter date and leave the boys at home.

Here's my sweet excited girl. We got there nice and early and got to take a bunch of pictures before the show started

 Here we are together

 This is one of Nancy's (our piano teacher) son's, Ben and his partner.

 Alana was THRILLED beyond words when she realized that her 1st grade teacher, Mrs. Dunn and her husband were in the festival. When Mrs. Dunn saw Alana during the promenade, she cried :)

 I loved seeing how sweet Mr. Dunn was with his wifey. :)

 We loved all of the costumes. I tried to take pictures of all of the beautiful dresses. This one was embroidered flowers on the overlay

 This dress was all lacy

 This is Sister Draper (from our ward) and she happened to be in what I thought was the most beautiful dress of the evening.

 Pretty green dress.

 Here's the stage, empty, and ready for performers :)

 We were SO ready for the show to start :)

 Watching the "future strauss kids" dancing around getting the show started.

 This cute boat brought the maestro onto the stage. cute

 This is the stage lit up after the intermission. Pretty purple :)

 These silver dresses were gorgeous! (Mrs. Dunn is the dancer all the way to the left)

 One of the youth dances. Alana loved it when the boys picked the girls up

 Another youth dance. Alana said this was her favorite dance

 This boat with this performer came out from behind the stage. He stood and sang Adel vice (the song from The Sound of Music)

 Off it goes after t he performance

 And this was the final dance in what ended up being Alana's favorite costumes (and Mr. and Mrs. Dunn front and center!)

Alana and I decided this is going to turn into an annual mother daughter night. Can't wait for next year! :)