After New Years, my sister and I were moved up another class level in ballet, which now included us taking part in performances of ballets instead of just recitals. The classes were much more intense and the instructors far more demanding. They seemed to push Harper and me especially hard, and we took to the training like ducks to water.

We also enjoyed the other styles of dance as well as gymnastics, but if given the choice, we would drop them all and entirely focus on ballet. However, our mom wasn't about to allow us to do that since it would lead to far less interaction with boys. Harper and I don't find boys disgusting and avoid them like some girls our age do, but neither do we go out of our way to interact with them either. With everything we were involved in, we were busy, and that itself made it hard to maintain our current friends. Honestly, at this point in our lives, ballet was our main priority.

Soon enough, our instructors informed us that our first performance of the season was coming up in a few months, and we would be performing Sleeping Beauty. Since the cast was rather large for the ballet, our class was combined with several others. Neither Harper nor I ended up with lead roles since those went to far more experienced dancers, but we still ended up with important roles, which meant we were onstage quite often. We certainly enjoyed our time on stage, and that only further cemented our desire of wanting to be ballerinas.

In May, our parents arrange for time off and make a plan for all of us to spend 5 days at Amusement World, a huge theme park in Missouri.