I start my day by waking up with wet kisses from my furry little friend. I usually snuggle up with her for a bit until I get up.

I’ll roll out of bed around 9 or 9.30am. First thing I do is take a shower. Next, I start my beauty routine. I sit on the floor in my room in front of a large mirror. My pup Sophie always sits right next to me the entire time.

Next, I do my hair as quickly as possible, before heading to the closet to pick my outfit for the day. In this time, I think about my day to help me decide what type of outfit to wear. (What kind of group classes, what am I teaching in my lessons, am I teaching the kids today, are there dance sessions?) These things play a huge role in what’ll be comfortable to wear. Once I choose my outfit, I set it aside, and throw on my practice attire.

I leave the house around 10 and grab some breakfast on my way out the door. Sometimes, I’ll have a nut bar and a banana, or if I’m feeling fancy, I’ll grab a croissant or some other pastry I picked up from the store the weekend before. On the way to work, we stop at Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts for our much-needed coffee.

We get to work around 11 or so to start practice. We start with a little warm-up and a quick stretch, then get to dancing. Most practices begin with a round of all our dances. From there, we decide on what we will focus on for that practice.

When practice is over, we get changed, and prepare for our work day. We start with a daily meeting at 1pm. We go over the day, what we would like to accomplish, and fill each other in on anything important for the week.

My afternoons are filled with meetings, dance sessions, studying my dancing, creating lesson plans, or teaching. By 5pm, I’m starving, so I head to the kitchen for my yummy dinner I prepared the night before. During our dinner break, we all sit and chat. We laugh at each other’s dumb jokes and exchange funny YouTube videos that we found over the weekend.

By 6pm, we meet again to go over the evening. The evening is always busier, so there’s a nice buzz around the studio. The radio pumps good, upbeat music throughout the night. You can feel the energy from the other lessons and group classes going on around you.

When 10pm rolls around, we wrap up our last lessons. At this time, I look over my week again. During that time, Kennedy usually sets up music for a round. I join him on the dance floor and we dance through all our dances once more before leaving. During this round, we don’t talk or try to fix anything. We just dance.

We head home for the night and are greeted – before even getting to the door – by Sophie. She hears us park and watches us approach through the window. Once we reach the front stairs, she jets for the door to meet us. She’s so excited that she can’t control herself, so her entire body wiggles. She runs back and forth, jumping on us, for 15 minutes straight before she calms down.

I quickly change and get started cooking dinner for the night and the next day. We finally get to sit down. After dinner, I clean up – sometimes Kennedy helps. Then we sit and watch an episode of something on Netflix before we’re off to bed. Usually we’re in bed around 1am. That sums up a pretty typical day for me!