In The Hartland: Lia's First Homecoming Dance

Friday, October 6, 2023

Lia's First Homecoming Dance

A few weeks before Lia's Homecoming dance, she announced that she was going to go with a group of her closest, XC friends. Since she has only been going to her new high school for a few weeks and only knows a handful of people, I was so grateful that she had this group of friends to go to the dance with. I was also so grateful that it is now an acceptable trend to go to formal dances with friends instead of being dependent on a boy asking you to go. So, after ordering her dress online and buying her ticket, Lia waited for the big day to come. However, after waiting almost a month for her dress to come in the mail, I contacted Amazon and learned that her dress was help up in customs after arriving in the United States from China. So, with only a week to go, Lia and I headed out last Thursday evening with Emmett in tow, and miraculously found a darling, affordable, and somewhat modest dress at Macy's. What luck! In addition, after learning a few days later that the entire evening was really not planned out, I stepped up and contacted the mothers of the four other girls and arranged a spot to meet up for pictures, made their dinner reservations, and organized a ride to and from the dance at the Tacoma Convention Center.

Since Lia's coach insisted that these girls go to XC practice after school today, they only had one hour to get ready for the dance! As a result, Lia went straight to her friend, Hope's, house to get ready since she lives much closer to the school in comparison to us. After getting ready, another mom picked up Lia and Hope and drove them to the mall with the rest of the girls where I was waiting to take their pictures in a nice strip of grass right off of the parking lot. After a quick photo shoot, the other mom and I drove them to BJ's where they ate dinner. About an hour later, Lia called me to come and pick them up and drive them off to the dance in Tacoma. After hitting some horrible traffic on I-5, I dropped the girls off at 7:15, just fifteen minutes after the dance started. Lia and her friends then had the best time dancing the night away until it ended at 10 p.m. when another mom drove them home. Lia came home so full of energy and so happy after spending a fun and memorable evening with her running buddies!

Emmett did such a good job being dragged to two different department stores to watch Lia pick out and try on several dresses. He asked several times if he could try on one, too. After telling him "no" over and over again, I finally gave in when Lia found her dress. Since we already had three sizes in the dressing room of the blue dress she ended up choosing, I let him put on a matching dress. Since we thought that this was so funny, we had to take a picture to capture this moment forever. I thought to myself that it is not every day that a 4-year old boy gets to go Homecoming dress shopping with an older sister!