Project 365 - Two Homecomings...

Yes, (Dad) it has been a month since I updated my blog. (Bad, Tracey... Bad... Bad!) Over the next week, I will be getting everything caught up... I have all the pictures... lots of stories to share... and so many projects, it is CRAZY! All leading up to another fun My Little Shoebox Blog Hop next weekend... November 19-21!!! So, let's get this catch up going!

Homecoming season... cooler nights... football games... King and Queen... and of course, the dance! Chris (not our budget) was lucky enough to go to TWO Homecoming dances this year. First up, our own OGHS Homecoming... way back in September... with friend, Laney. I don't know how YOU dressed for Homecoming, but OG has a pretty casual dress code... seriously... JEANS!? While every part of me cringed, Chris (and all of his friends) went to Homecoming in jeans... the gals in nice, but casual dresses. Whatever floats your boat, but I wanted to see some high heals, dress pants, and satin (not in that order!) Although Chris was limping from a football injury from the previous nights game, and poor Laney had the flu, they had a nice evening.

Chris and Laney... Nice and Casual photo shoot before the dance.

Chris with friend/neighbor Ryan... in their traditional pre-dance pose!

Homecoming #2 and the Tale of Two Corsages...

The "proposal"... Chris had been spending a lot of time with a very nice girl named Kendra... and she happens to be a cheerleader at rival school, SPHS. Kendra decided she was going to ask Chris to her Homecoming at SP... and let's just say... this girl has GUTS! First, she asked me if it was alright if she asked Chris (SERIOUSLY, how cute is that!?) Let's set the scene... OG and SP have a long standing rival football game called, "The Battle of the Bear." The week before the big game, we had our bye week, so our football team went to watch the SP game.  Chris was in the stands with the OG football team... Kendra was down on the track cheering... then the cheerleaders turned around and used their pom poms to spell out, "#88" (Chris' football number)... and Kendra came out with a poster board that said, "Will you go to Homecoming with me?" Chris came to the front of the stands, Kendra climbed up on something... he said "yes" and they hugged with the metal railing from the stands between them.  I've seen the pictures, and if the whole thing wasn't so DARN cute, I think both Chris and Kendra would have been stoned by their respective teams... but, all's well that ends well. They went to the SP Homecoming and had a fantastic time.

So, onto the Tale of the Two Corsages... Let's make this short and sweet... I ordered Kendra's corsage... the day of Homecoming, Jeff and I took Anna and Abby to Bates Nut Farm for our traditional pumpkin patch experience... we had fun and lost track of time... the florist closed at 2PM... we looked at our watches around 3:30PM... Chris was supposed to pick up Kendra around 5PM... we were 30 minutes away from home (with all that traffic). DRAT! I had already paid for the corsage that was now locked in the closed florist!

So, what does any panicked mom do...? I called our Vons and BEGGED the on-site florist to drop everything and make a corsage that I needed to pick up immediately. Her answer, "SURE! It will be ready in 15 minutes!" So I dropped the family off at the house and flew over to Vons to get the corsage before Chris got back to the house with Kendra. I ran into Vons, thanked the florist about a million times for the BEAUTIFUL corsage she made so quickly, paid for the SECOND corsage and started walking out the door... when Jeff called. When he got home, he checked the phone messages and their was a message from the original florist... the FIRST corsage was waiting for us at the dry cleaners, next door to the florist................................................................................ Yeah, I stopped cold in my tracks... and then started laughing! I went straight to the dry cleaners and picked up the original corsage (they had 3 corsages that people had forgotten to pick up on time!)

We told Kendra and Chris the story and let Kendra chose which corsage she wanted to have. (She chose the orchid... as shown in the picture at the top of this post.)  So, what did we do with the second corsage? We kept it in the fridge, just knowing that we wanted to do something special with it... which we did. On Monday, I found out it was Anna's DARLING Kindergarten teacher's birthday... so I tracked her down and gave her the corsage. She wore it all day and throughout the week, other teachers came up to me and told me how much she had enjoyed her special birthday surprise. What started as a Homecoming tragedy, turned into a beautiful blessing. I hope your day is just as blessed! Make it a GREAT one!



Oh, and I finally got to see some "traditional" Homecoming attire for the SP dance.  WOOO HOOOO!