Welcome to Dancing with the "Mars"!!

Ok, I know you're saying. . . ."Finally!" We'll the suspense was well worth the wait! Do you recognize the dress from this post??

We had a fantastic time at the BYU Ballroom Dance Camp!! Here's run-down of the week!

We left the kiddos with my Mom on Sunday evening and headed up to Highland to stay with Matt's sister's boyfriend at his fabulous home. I did tear up just a little when we left the kids. I was super excited to go, but that's the first time both of us have been away from all the kids.

The orientation was on Monday morning. . .we met up with all the campers, and got our complementary little tin of mints. Fabulous!!

(By the way, as I'm writing this I'm realizing how thankful I am for that Blogger autosave (it's already saved 3 times!!)

Ok, ok, I'm getting on with it! Every day we had our Samba and Foxtrot class (these are the dances we did for our Friday night show), then 4/5 days we also had Mambo, Cha Cha, Waltz, then throughout the week they had "your pick" classes where they taught a ton of other classes that weren't offered everyday.

There were SO many "different types" of people there. That's the best way to say it. We were one of the youngest married couples there. Many were in their 40's and several really cute older couples. There was one couple in our Samba class that was easily in their 70's--and so sweet. They were great dancers.

The instructors were awesome. They brought in 8 professionals. Our instructors for the week were Tony Dovolani, Elena Greneko, Urs Geisenhainer with Agnes Kazmiercsak, David and Valentina Weise, and Paul Richardson & Olga Rodionova.

Our Samba class was taught by Tony Dovolani. He and his partner Elena Grineko were both on Dancing with the Stars the last few years. He was with Stacy Keibler (holy long legs Batman!) the first season, and was with Leeza Gibbons last year.

Since this is a latin dance that requires some hip action, I decided we'd take it easy on Matt and do the beginners class. Any time Tony started talking about how to move your hips I would motion to Matt and say, "don't try to do that. . .just work on your feet!!" I think somehow they're disconnected. If he moved his hips, his feet stopped and if he moved his feet, he couldn't do the hips! But he sure looked cute trying!! And I will say, he's about 100 times better now!

Urs taught our Foxtrot. He was so funny, and it was a great class. Matt actually knew a few fox trot steps so we took the intermediate I class. I think Matt liked this dance the best (read: no hip action needed).

David taught the Waltz class, another favorite for Matt, and Olga taught our Mambo class---I don't think my hips have ever been so sore.

Besides the Samba and Foxtrot classes we did for the show, I think my favorite class was a "your pick" class that I did 3 times during the week. It was a West Coast Swing class-level 3-with Tony. Super fun and sweet moves, so I'll have to be working with Matt on that one.

So here are the pictures from the Friday night show. . .Tiff came and took easily 400 pictures!! Can you say thank goodness for digital?? And thank goodness for Tiff!!

Here's our foxtrot. . .while you're looking at your photos you have to sing in your head (or out loud!) New York, New York by Frank Sinatra. . .that was our song!

Yeah! We DID it!!

and here's our Samba photos! The song that Tony picked was Rompe by Daddy Yankee . I could not get that out of my head all week!! (NaNaNaNaNaNaNaNaNaNaNaNaNa) Whitney also LOVED it. She would boogie all around when I would sing it. The dance was designed for us to switch partners since we had a few extra girls in the class. Of course, the one lady that was forever confused, was in the wrong spot and so Matt and I ended up not being able to dance together. . .oh well. They played a samba song later that night that we did our dance to.

This is before our performance. . .I made a joke to Matt about stealing Tony's money when he threw it out for the fake dice game they were going to 'play' to start off our performance. . .and Tony must've heard. . .we're such close friends, we can just joke around like that!!

Here he is telling me good luck. (I was glad Tiff was paying attention and got this photo!!)

Back together with my sweetie!!

After the performances, the professionals did their showcase. Each couple did 2 numbers.

Urs and Agnes did a viennese waltz then a quickstep/foxtrot/jive.

Paul and Olga did a Paso Doble (does this look like a matador and his cape or what??)

and a jive.

Tony and Elena did a hip-hop Cha Cha then an amazing Rumba. Here's a clip of the Rumba they perfomed. It was the same as the one they performed for the American Ballroom Challenge. You just have to ignore the cheesy commentary. There are some other clips of Tony and Elena you can check out Here and here,

It was a fantastic week. Most of all I just loved being alone with Matt again. I think with hub-bub of kids I had forgotten that teenage silly love. Even though we were exhausted and tired, I loved being able to go out to eat with him, and hang out at the house with him, and just BE together. I loved seeing him enjoy dancing with me and actually start to count out the beat to me as we would listen to music in the car just to prove to me that he was getting it! So, thanks babe! I love you!

Next post? Meet Tony's new dance partner!! "When Whitney met Tony"