Riot and Frolic

a mostly ballroom dance, but also a bunch of other stuff, blog

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about

I own and rock people’s faces off teaching ballroom dancing at Dancers Studio in St. Paul, MN. My husband and I compete professionally in American style and wrangle eight children in our spare time. I’ve been teaching and competing in ballroom dancing for over 25 years and have lots of opinions on it. I am an expert by any means, but there are quite a few dancers who are better than me and I have a solid knowledge of basic technique, so suck it.

Category: Domesticality

  • List of Last Week’s Labors of Love

    – BUDGETS!  Being self-employed is AWESOME, but also really scary, mostly in the money department.  There's taxes and overhead and insurance and investments to deal with, where before there was just a paycheck.  We hadn't put that much thought into where and how our money was going around (it just was), but I think I got it on lockdown.…

  • Homeschooling It Is

    I started MAH BLOG as an effort to communicate less.   Or communicate EVERYTHING, but less repeatedly. On that note, here's what I'll have to explain to everyone at some point: Why We Are Choosing Homeschool We travel a lot – as a family, we jet (or more likely, "car") around the nation about once…

  • Churchill Way

    We bought a fixer-upper a few years ago.  [Grand understatement.] The first year or so was the blissful demolition of the sagging back deck and sketchy basement "apartment" and pulling up the carpet.   BEFORE: plus, hornets! BEFORE: as creepy as you think it was BEFORE: this was the first to go BEFORE: "blue institutional"…

  • List of Last Week’s Labors of Love

    – BIRTHDAY WEEK, so: – donuts (walked down bright and early to the local place, SugaRush) for breakfast twice.   no tv and no donuts make homer go something something   – the cutest card of all time, that I've been saving "for V" for a year and a half.   little red riding hood paper…

  • Terrible Two

    Zoo is two.  While she is my first child to make an example of what Terrible Twos are supposed to mean, she also does this: look at how cute I am And this… eating broccomole by the handful And this: splashing peacefully for 30 minutes in freezing water Have a great birthday, you weird baby.…

  • Happy Wednesday

    It's Wednesday.  Here's a couple things to smile about:   Mumford & Sons' "Hopeless Wanderer" video.  If you don't know who Mumford & Sons are, well… let's say they're a popular folk band.  Mandolins are involved.   They look like they sound: classy hobos.  If you didn't know it, for the first 1:00 you'd think…

  • 5

    Today is V's golden birthday (she is 5). She is great.  Happy birthday, #1! Two years ago: Headgear, in which I wear stuff on my head.  

  • Short Hair, Don’t Care

    I cut my hair and lost my mind.  Was my hair keeping my brain in place? Yes. Seriously, I cut off a foot of my hair (I donated it, but damn, if that thing didn't look like a nasty old horse tail) and now have decidedly Short Hair (bobs do NOT count as short hair,…

  • List of Last Week’s Labors of Love

    – read Pride and Prejudice.  Accidentally.  Explanation: I like reading while eating my breakfast.  Much to the detriment of my brain cells, my table has been well-stocked with catalogs and magazines.  But late last week, GOD FORBID!, I had run out of inane material and I shuffled over to the bookshelf and grabbed the pretty,…

  • Punctuation

    It's been awhile since I wrote, so I thought I'd ease back into things by posting this weird sign I made. And I'm finally enjoying Austen.  So there. One year ago: LLLL, in which I ramble on… in a completely out-of-character fashion.