Dear Friends,
We Love Celebrations!
Last week was such a fun week celebrating a birthday during every class! We are not done yet, and we have more celebrations this week! We hope to see you this week, or later sometime in the summer. Remember that your child or family member is always free with a paid participating dancer!
All classes are currently held at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Marin at 240 Channing Way in San Rafael.
WEAR A TOP WITH AN INSPIRATIONAL SAYING
Tuesday, June 10th, 9:30am 75 Minute Stop Drop and Dance
Happy Birthdays Kristen Sperling & Laika Chow!
REGULAR STRENGTH & STRETCH CLASS
Wednesday, June 11th 9:30am
This will be a regular Wednesday morning 75 minute class! Bring a heavy and medium set of dumbbells and a mat!
WEAR RAINBOW DISCO THEME!
Thursday, June 12th, 9:30am 75 Minute Stop Drop and Dance
Happy Birthdays Jen Lefferts, Karin Conn & Sara Rainbolt!
CLASSES CANCELLED FOR SUMMER BREAK
Saturday, June 14th - Saturday, June 28th
Classes will resume throughout the summer starting on Tuesday, July 1st!
Members have unlimited access to our on-demand library of previously-live Stop Drop and Dance and Strength & Stretch classes, so even if there is no live session, you can still get a workout in!
Happy Triple Birthdays Keala Landry, Rita Ribera Channon and Sharon Mor!
Two years ago, Keala, Rita and Sharon found out that they not only had birthdays within a week of each other, but also they were all turning 50 and were basically triplets!
So they threw a perfect joint 50th Black and Gold themed Stop Drop and Dance class that year, and have kept up the tradition last year and this year again, to celebrate their birthdays together!
Thank you to everyone who joined Tuesday morning on zoom or in-person and celebrated with Keala, Rita and Sharon, and a special shoutout to our decorating extraordinaire, Erin Meyers, who always comes early prepared with unique background decor!
Happy 48 Ladies! (We're counting backwards now...)
Happy Birthday Leslie Dinham!
We started off our Stop Drop and Dance celebration Thursday morning for Leslie Dinham with “We Are Family” by Sister Sledge. Leslie had just come back from visiting her extended family in Atlanta and was dancing with so much love for her 3 sisters and brother, and extended family!
If you don't know Leslie, she is our signature cake-maker and has baked for our community multiple times for different occasions, including most recently, a giant chocolate sheet cake for our Dance-a-thon in February!
Thank you to everyone who was able to come Thursday in our rainbow Power With Grace tanks, and of course to Erin Meyers again, who continues to go over and beyond by showing up to all our special classes with decorations for our backdrop.
Grateful for our families, and grateful for our dance family too!
Happy Birthday Lorna Kirk!
On our Bali retreat last month, Lorna shared a personal habit that she has made into a part of her daily routine.
She sets an alarm everyday at the same time, and it is a moment to reflect on the statement, “Aren’t I lucky …. (Fill in the blank).”
Aren’t we lucky for our health? To move our bodies the way we want to? To dance?
Aren’t we lucky that with technology these days, we can contact our loved ones who live far away instantly? And even FaceTime them (like the forward thinking ideas in Back to the Future!).
Aren’t we lucky we have a warm bed to lie down in? Or a car to drive us around? Or a place to call home?
Happiest birthday to Lorna Kirk, whom we celebrated on Saturday morning at Stop Drop and Dance with her daughter, CeCe! Thank you Lorna for sharing this beautiful daily habit we can all incorporate into our lives!
Aren't we lucky human beings?
Congratulations Graduates!
Summer is officially here with many students out of school. Last week, I missed our Wednesday Strength & Stretch class to drive down to the South Bay to attend my nieces' 8th grade graduation. I am so glad I went, because these momentous moments are truly very rare and special. I am so proud of my beautiful, talented, athletic, intelligent and kind nieces!
As a previous teacher for 10 years, there is a deep sense of joy and pride I get from seeing kids individually get recognized for their hard work - with their name called in front of everyone, with that solo walk across the stage, with that handshake and the diploma in hand.
It makes me emotional just thinking about it, because school is hard! Not just academically hard, but there are also layers of surviving through friendships, relationships, puberty, self-identity, and on and on. School is not just a place of learning - it is where we all grew up and figured out a little bit more of who we want to be in life.
Each graduation is a symbol of closing one chapter in our own "Book of Life" and stepping forward with hope and excitement into another chapter.
Congratulations to all the families out there celebrating a graduate - from preschool, to 5th grade, to 8th grade, to 12th grade, to college, to higher education, and beyond - what a tremendous achievement and something to be very proud of.
What made my nieces' graduation even more special was that their Principal and Vice-Principal were also both retiring after almost 30 years, so they gave choked-up, emotional, powerful goodbye speeches. And after all the kids walked across the stage, their names were called too. They walked across the stage and accepted hugs from fellow staff and board members, as they graduated from a lifetime of working so hard, and entered into their new chapter titled, "Retirement."
Your life is such a beautiful book, and there are so many more chapters ahead.
Love,
Grace
