Welcome to many happy miles where we celebrate all sorts of forward movement.

Whether it's a long swim on a cold morning or a short run on a cold morning, we are in January after all. We're here for all of it. I'm

Dimity McDowell, co-founder of another mother runner. And I'm Sarah Wassner Flynn. And yes, we are in the

throes of winter, but my mind is on spring musicals, Dimini, because the first of my four

children was cast in a musical for the spring at her middle school. I'm so excited.

That gets me so wait. Okay, so which child, first of all? Nellie, are my, yeah, the sixth grader,

and she's a quiet little church mouse, but she loves to perform, apparently, and she got a role in

Shrek Jr., the musical, which has a lot of characters.

She's one of several cast members, I should say.

She's not Fiona and she's not Shrek, but she's a dancing rat and she's a something else,

fairy tale character.

She's got a couple of roles.

A dancing rat.

Hey, as my son, Ben, who is all about musical theater, says there are no small roles, only small actors, right? So,

no small roles. I mean, once, once in a while, like when he was in shows, I would be like,

well, so, you know, just how often you think you're going to be

on the stage? He's like, mom, you can't ask. I'm like, okay. How many lines do you have? I totally

ask that. I'm like, do you have any lines? And she's like, I don't know. But they started rehearsal

this week. Yeah, we had the snow week last week. So they were only in school for like a day or two days.

And then this week, she's been in rehearsals. And the director, who's their musical theater teacher there, has created this amazing schedule. Everything is so organized. And it's like there

are a lot of cast members. I don't even know how many. Like I think upwards of 40 or something

like that, but she seems to be super on top of it. And the costumes are going to be really fun.

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