Our Rising Star...Back from Dallas!

Wow...What an amazing and super busy week we've had in Dallas! Luckily, we did not have to add an early baby arrival to our agenda while at Mylani's much anticipated talent competition. The event started Wednesday evening and ended Sunday morning with the awards ceremony. It was the largest turnout for this event with over 450 participants from age 4 and up.

Each day started around 6:30am and ended anywhere around 10 to 11:30pm. Since Mylani was in the dance and singing competition as well, we had additional wardrobe changes and warm-ups to squeeze in. On Friday alone, we had 7 wardrobe changes as she had to prepare for 7 different events and still had to round up enough energy to perform in the Showcase that evening.

Mylani did so well in her acting, modeling, singing, and dancing competitions that she received a special invite to audition for an upcoming Nickelodeon tv series. This normally does not happen, but since the talent scout was there and they had not found the right actor for the new role yet, Mylani was asked to learn a 2-page script and get video taped performing it. We only had a few hours to prepare and the poor thing was so nervous...not to mention tired from all the other competitions she had to focus on as well. Mylani did come through and had positive feedback from casting team. The audition tape will now be submitted to the casting director for review and we were told they'll let us know. Filming for the series is in LA so we'll have to see how this all transpiers.

In addition to Nickelodeon, Mylani had a lot of interest from agents in New York and Los Angeles for modeling and acting, but mainly for modeling and commercials since she's still so raw in acting. We are working out the details of each of these options over the next few weeks. This is all very exciting and nerve wrecking at the same time, but part of the business as we've learned over the past few days. (Here's a photo of Mylani and Charlie Winfield from Funny Faces agency based out of NY)

Mylani competed against 100 kids in the 8-12 age category (she's 8 for those who didn't know), and took home the following awards:
2nd Place - Swimsuit Runway (Modeling)
2nd Place - Cold Reads (Acting)
3rd Place - Singing
3rd Place - Runway (Modeling)
Showcase Recognition (1 of 18 selected to perform in front of 1000+ audience)

Will and I are so proud of Mylani for working hard over the past few months to prepare for the competition and then coming through when it was her time to shine. Mylani enjoyed being on stage, getting recognized for her talents, and meeting new friends who have similar goals. Now that we're home, she is enjoying some downtime, hanging out with her neighborhood friends, and preparing for arrival of her new baby sister later this week.


(Mylani with Expo friends and acting coach, Aaron Jackson from 90's tv series California Dreams, Getting a good luck kiss from dad before the big Showcase, Boy in blue blazer is Mylani's little crush...he's 14, Cool looking McDonald's we found while driving around Dallas)

Although we do not have a video clip of her performance at the showcase, here's the 2 min version of her qualifying audition. Mylani placed 3rd in youth singer category ages 4-14.

Here's the video clip of Mylani's dance audition. We worked with fellow church member, Jessica Long, to put together this jazz/hip hop routine 3 weeks ago. Alth0ugh Mylani did not place in this event, she did make it to round 2 of auditions.