The Dance Phase

After spending Thanksgiving with my extended family, and visiting with my niece from TEXAS (a freshman at BYU now), I realized that not ALL High School teenagers ask one another to the school dances in the "creative ways" I was accustomed to growing up in UTAH. (and that my own son and Young Women are also doing now, in UTAH.)

That's kind of sad - and BORING - for my niece not to have had that experience.  I think, the asking and the answering was sometimes MORE FUN than the actual dance!  Sssshhhh - don't tell any of my old dates that!  ;)  But, having a son, I have also realized that maybe the GIRLS enjoy this zany tradition more than the BOYS.  Ryan says he can't ever think of any good ideas, and that it's stressful (what?!?).....let's just say that at dance asking/answering times, he comes to me [repeatedly] for advise more than at any other time!!  ;)

So, which parts of the country DO ask creatively, and which parts just get straight to the point and ask face to face, or over the phone (but hopefully not via text!)?  Based on an Arizona-based blog I read out there in blogosphere, I know they ask creatively.  But, my SIL grew up in a teeny, tiny town in southeastern Idaho, and she says they did not.  I even saw some of it happening in Disney's movie, "PROM."  
Everyone who lives somewhere other than Utah, give a shout out and let me know what happens where you live.  I'm curious!

My children are each 3 years apart in school, so after Ryan graduates High School this year, then Kyle will enter High School next year.  And then when he graduates, Haylee will start.....on down the line to Brookelle.  (Hopefully, they let me out of the nursing home to attend her graduation in 2026!)  So, we are definitely in "The Dance Phase" now - and for the next 13 years.  Yea!

I went through my photos to see what I had taken of  "the dance phase."   I realized I only have photos of all the creativity that has happened at OUR home, but not when he has taken it to the girl's house.

{Which is a shame since all my "advise" that magically turned into his ideas, and he actually executed. were really great!} ;)

VALENTINE'S DANCE
Although, I had warned him that girls will sometimes do something to their bedrooms in the asking/answering, and that it would be a WISE CHOICE to keep it clean for about a month before the dances, he chose not comply with THAT particular advise.

And then he came home to his pig pen bedroom with an unmade bed, complete with covers wadded in a heap in the middle, to find THIS on his bed. 

He was horrified, "This is embarrassing!  Why did you let her see my room like this?"
To which I replied, "Why did you leave it like this?"

(There was a "Y", an "E" and an "S" written on three different strips of paper somewhere in that pile.)

PROM
Another time, Ryan had asked a girl during The Masters, so in honor of that, he used golf balls and wrote an invitation using a bunch of golf terms.  It also worked out nicely that she lived on Fairway Circle!

So, then she played off of that golf theme and answered him like this.

And then on our front "lawn"  (this was pre-sod days), she used golf balls to spell out her answer. 
(I found out from her mom that she kept having to chase the balls that kept rolling away on the dirt since there was no grass to hold them in place!)

A funny story about this answer was that one night the girl Ryan had asked to the dance texted him, "I have a feeling you should go look out front."
So, Ryan went and looked out front.
NOTHING.
And then he had the thought, Oh no!  She went to our old house!  (We weren't in the current phone book, yet.)

So we got in the car and started driving up there - just 3 blocks away, hoping to get to it before the new owners.
In the meantime, he texted her, "I don't see anything."
She texted, "What's your address?"
He texted, "We moved" and added our new address.
She texted, "Woops!"

At about that time, we got to our old house and we saw a car parked across the street, and a person moving around the front yard, picking things up......I just drove on by while Ryan ducked down in his seat.  :)
The next evening, she came back to our real home, and left the answer again.



HOMECOMING
The girl had called me and asked if she could come decorate his room.  She only had time to do it when I wasn't going to be home, so I told my daughters that she'd be coming and to let her in.  THEY were nice enough (or stressed about the state of his room) to at least make his bed for him before she came.

She left a bunch of starbursts and this note on his bed.  When I was on my way home with Ryan in my car, Haylee called and told me the girl was late coming and she wasn't done, so don't come home, yet!

So, what should I do?

I remembered my friend had texted me earlier, so I called her and asked, "Did you need me?"
She was like, "Not anymore."
And I said, "OK, I'll be right over."
And then I went over there, while Ryan waited in the car, and "bought us some time."
When Matt texted me, "The coast is clear", I returned home with Ryan.
He entered his pig pen bedroom, and even from upstairs, I heard him exclaim, "Oh No!"
Later he asked me why they always come when he has a messy room.
Uhhhhh.......because he ALWAYS has a messy room?!?

He first looked at all the starburst wrappers to see if her answer was written on any of them.
NOTHING.
So, then he unwrapped most of them looking for any writing on the insides.
NOTHING.

Exhausted, he fell backward onto his bed, and declared, "I'm never going to find it!  
And then he looked UP.

On the ceiling, he saw his answer written in glow-in-the-dark STARS.
(his family was IN on the location of this answer!)  tee hee ;)



HARVEST DANCE

He found this on our front porch one day. 

No "adventures" accompanied this one, but in the weeks leading up to the dance, as the kids were texting each other and they discovered that I grew up in the same home ward (church congregation) with this girl's mom!  (small world!)

The girl texted Ryan, "Ask your mom about the time she stopped to see a boy on the way back from Girl's Camp."  So he did.

She would have to remember me for that incidence!

(Hey, I was VERY fond of this boy who lived in Cache Valley, and we were "in the area" on the way back from church Girl's Camp, so it would be a waste if I didn't have THE BISHOP stop by his work, wouldn't it?!?  The bishop obliged, and I had the boy paged to the front and he unsuspectingly came out to see a dozen or so [un-primped, post-camp] girls waiting for him in the lobby.  Well, I was waiting, the rest were standing behind me spying.  After we "visited," we went on our way.  Makes total sense, doesn't it?  At least to my 16/17 yr. old self it did.  I guess it was so surprising to this girl's mom, she hasn't forgotten it after 26 years!)  :)

CHRISTMAS DANCE

Ryan was actually studying in our front office  one evening, and he got a text from his friend, "I think you should go downstairs and look at your baseball trophies."  Ryan thought it was a weird request, but he went downstairs, anyway.
Meanwhile, Matt came into the kitchen where I was and told me he thought Ryan was getting asked to the dance right then - he'd seen a car and someone out the front windows when he was carrying Brookelle up to bed.  When the doorbell actually rang, I purposely left some "getaway" time, but it happened to be a snowy night, which made it so she wasn't able to run very quickly, so they hadn't driven away, yet, when I opened the door.  Woops!

There was a couple of weird things about this.  

1st - Ryan didn't even know this girl who had asked him.  In fact, her friends had done the actual asking for her. 

2nd - a day or two later, she actually texted him that her mom said she couldn't go anymore.  

So, he got "unasked."   
That stinks!

That's OK - the girl doesn't even know how to spell our last name anyway!  I've written about that before.  (And my hang up with other misuses of the English language.)  ;)

CHRISTMAS DANCE - part 2
We got the "Cookies for Santa" Encore on our front porch a few days after the "unasking."
Uh Oh - was that a bad omen?
But all I had to do was look at the adorable details:  a real RED platter, a glass milk bottle with a straw, Christmas Oreo cookies with red filling, a letter tied up with green string, and baby carrots, too!  I was feeling better about this one, already!

AND THEN I SAW THAT SHE KNEW HOW TO SPELL OUR LAST NAME, AND I WAS SOLD!  ;)