Monday, December 22, 2008

Mi Burrito Sabanero

So about a month ago one of the women in my ward at church asked me if I had any talent for dancing. I hesitently told her that I enjoyed dancing but I didn't think of it as a talent. She then revealed her true intent and asked if my husband and I would be willing to present some kind of christmassy dance for the ward Christmas party. To my own surprise I told her "Sure, that would be fun, but let me talk to my husband about it." When I talked to Refugio about it he was also somewhat hesitant but at my urging he came on board. So of course for a few weeks we poked around and talked about it, we even tried to practice once. The practicing only made us realize how complicated putting together a dance that people would actually enjoy watching for three minutes can be.

As the day of the Christmas party grew closer I steadily grew more tense about the whole situation, but I wasn't willing to go back on my word and not present anything. One day I had an epifany(sp?) and thought of a Christmas song I had just learned the year before as my husband introduced me to the world of hispanic Christmas songs. The song was about a boy and his burro traveling to Bethlehem to see baby Jesus. The song is called "Mi Burrito Sabanero." I pitched the idea to my husband of us dancing to this song in character; I would dress up as a little boy and we would find Refugio a donkey costume. My thought was if we couldn't put together a cool dance combo to impress people in our ward we might as well go to the opposite extreme and just make fools of ourselves and hope to make people laugh.

I couldn't find a donkey costume, but I discovered that you can do wonders with hot glue and felt. Refugio didn't want to be the donkey for some reason...so I ended up doing to the job, which was okay with me. I actually ended up making a donkey head for Kathryn as well, which looks just like Eeyore (I'll post pictures later). So we made up a dance for the song and practiced and practiced for about three days. The performance went well even though I botched it towards the end. Kathryn wandered out onto the stage ahead of us and was SO cute. It doesn't show in the video below, but on our actual camcorder she looks amazingly cute waddling out as a little grey donkey smiling at everyone. Well, Refugio just told me that my blog is too long and that no one will want to read this much...so if you've made it this far congratulations now just watch the video. Merry Christmas!