Chicken. Dance.

Full day today!

We started out early with a visit to downtown Gainesville for filming of Summer Xtreme.  This went well, just like last year.  We go over to the courthouse side of things, and there we find quiet and shaded areas that have lots of courtyards and brickwork.  It makes for a nice backdrop.  The funny thing is that on the square, there was a festival.  Not just any festival, but the annual Spring Chicken Festival.

So yeah, we sort of went to that too.  It was involuntary, to be honest.  We were about to leave the parking deck, but were in fact trapped there due to the fact that a parade was coming by.  I am not making this up:  we were blocked by marching bongo players with middle-aged hula dancers and people in chicken costumes.  Followed by a Jurassic Park vehicle playing the "Chicken Dance."  Followed by a few other floats with people in chicken costumes hurling candy out at the kids.

The square was loaded with lots of vendors selling barbecue chicken, and it looked like a fun time for everyone, unless you are in fact a chicken.  In which case, it is probably the most horrific thing you can experience.

We didn't stick around too long, because at 1:00 pm, we had an appointment with Praise in Motion.  Here's Madison in front of the stage, getting ready for the production.

This is our first time getting to see Praise in Motion's spring performance.  They do a Christmas one that we see just about every year, and there is this spring one that we usually find ourselves too busy to attend.  But not this year.  We drove down to Friendship Road, and just a ways down is a new venue that is called, oddly enough, The Venue.

It was a series of dances, some ballet and others not.  But all of them were very nice.  We sat in the third row, and enjoyed the whole thing from start to finish.  It was rather long, but I think that might be because of the substantial intermission, which might be related to the typical line at the women's rest room.  When the performances were going on though, time was not dragging at all.  They were all very good, in fact somewhat of a 'greatest hits' of their choreographed routines over the past twenty-five years.  It was nice to see and share with them.

We left there afterwards, dropped by RaceTrac for our usual Sodapalooza refill (already we're up to six or seven refills), and headed home for the day.  Madison had some piano to do, in fact a lot of it to do.  She played her recital piece another twenty times tonight, and still has a bit of work to do on it.  She's really pouring herself into this, trying to get it right.  It just takes time, and hopefully we'll get it up to speed by Tuesday or so.  We'll see.  The deadline for her teacher is Tuesday, but there's another week after that.

As a reward - and a break - for her practice, we finished our "Pirates of the Caribbean" marathon with a look at "On Stranger Tides."  Now that mermaid theme song is stuck in our heads.  But it was another fun visit with the pirates, and now we're officially ready for the fifth movie when that comes out next month.

We've got a big day tomorrow, wrapping up Neverland.  In fact, Daddy is making some emergency script changes even now, so it's time to go.

"Complications arose, ensued, were overcome." 
- Jack Sparrow