and a Happy New Year!

Wow! I can't believe it's been so long since I posted anything. Well, I won't waste your time filling you in on the last few weeks. Christmas was fun and surprisingly relaxing despite having a cold, but other than that, it's pretty much been life as normal here.

But there is one nice thing I've been meaning to post about, and I think it will be a nice first post for a new year and a new decade.

Just before Christmas, our school had their annual middle school Snowflake Dance. Caly always goes to the dances and she was super excited to go to this one in particular. She'd had someone ask her to the dance, but knowing that he had stronger feelings for her than she had for him, she declined and decided to go with her friends. She wore a full length dress, brand new high heeled boots, and looked fantastic. After the dance when I picked her up, she was giddy with excitement. But she wasn't excited about a boy liking her or asking her to dance. Instead, she was excited about something very different. You see, every year at the dance, the eighth grade elects a king and queen of the dance. Traditionally, no one campaigns or asks for votes for themselves or anyone else. They just vote for their friends. But this year all the kids were passing word to each other to vote for one particular person. So when the time came for the vote, almost every student there had heard about the plan and they all voted for the same person.

No, it wasn't for Caly. It was for one of her friends, someone she's known since they were in diapers together. He's not a close friend though, because despite being in the same grade at the same school, they have hardly ever had classes together. You see, he's a special ed student who is only mainstreamed in some of his classes. Yes, you read that right. The king of the dance is a special needs student. And in case you were wondering, no, it wasn't a prank, a joke, or even pity. He's just a really nice kid, and the other students wanted to make him happy. They like him.

Caly said, "He was so happy! At first I thought he was gonna yell, and then I thought he was gonna jump, and then I thought his face was going to break from smiling so big." As soon as I heard, I called Scott, because Scott is friends with this boy's grandfather and I knew that Scott would be excited. So I called Scott and then Scott called his grandfather to make sure that he'd heard what happened. And apparently his grandfather had arrived at the dance to pick him up early and was there in the back of the room to see it happen. I'm not sure I can really appreciate what that must have felt like.

But what a wonderful way to end one year and bring in the next.