The waiting game is over

It seems like when that first day of high school starts that someone presses the fast forward button on life! It feels like there are so many things that I had planned on doing as a family (1,000s of camping trips, going to Disneyland, having kids in bedrooms with less than 3 kids, spending millions of hours together playing games and laughing together...) and it FEELS like my boy is leaving the nest next week...okay I know I have a lot more time...but it FEELS like it.

Austin turned 14 last month. FOURTEEN!!!!!!!

At the beginning of the month we had Stake Conference. On the way home Austin turned to me and said, "I hope all of those girls live in Fallon!" Usually I am a perceptive mother...but I TOTALLY missed the boy checkin' out the girls! And then it dawns on me that just a few days after his birthday was his first stake dance. I grew up in Utah and so a stake dance was not all that fun...I mean we had sock hops almost EVERY week!! But HERE a stake dance is totally RAD! I mean WICKED COOL!!! We have gone back and forth on this thing because someone told him that if you told a girl "no" when she asked you to dance that you had to go home (LOL!!!!). STRESS...I mean the one and only dance he went to in middle school he told 3 girls "no!" ("No, I don't feel like it." WHAT?!! Then WHY are you at a DANCE?!!) Scott and I about DIED when he told us he'd said "no". Thus began the lectures on the fragilness of a girls feelings and how you don't just say, "no...I don't FEEL like it".

So when we first learned of stake dances...we were SOOOO excited!!! And then we got news of no-saying-no (totally not true by the way...but I'M not telling them!) So we decided that we weren't going to the dances. Then came Stake Conference and our view completely changed!!! And their mother gave them the advice..."if you don't want to dance with someone who asks you, than you ask SOMEONE to dance first!!!"

Fastforward to picture...





We are tired of waiting inside for our ride to the dance...so we'll go outside and watch up the street...WE can't WAIT!!!!


And of course we don't get home until midnight and so mom stayed up late cleaning (yes folks...you heard it right! I cleaned!!!). We had a very content aura about us as we came through the door. We had a good time.

(I wonder if his favorite part was waking up the next morning and smelling the leftover perfume on his pillow...hahaha...my last dance at the sock hop during my freshman year was often with a boy named Shane & he wore lots of cologne & I would sleep in the next morning smelling my pillow)