Dance.

That title should really have several exclamation points after it, but the period looks more savvy, so I'm sticking with it.

This weekend was a dancing weekend. It started Friday when I drove up to Snapps for Bible study. I walked up their front drive, stepped onto the porch and did a crazy dance of fright accompanied by a squeal because Mariah, Jenn, and Jordan jumped from a hiding place and scared me. They make me feel so loved. Haha. Aside from getting scared, Bible study was great. We went through Job, but kind of from a different perspective than I've looked at if before...so that was good. On the way home, I did another dance in the driver's seat, but it was from nervousness. Driving up the last hill, there was so much fog I could only see two feet in front of me for what felt like two miles. It was exhilarating, if not a little stressful, and the most extreme driving I've ever done.

Saturday I went to my friend Erin O'Shea's graduation party. It was nice to hang out with her and all her crazy friends, several of whom ended up in the top branches of a pine tree that was half again as tall as the barn. I was *this close* to following them up, but knew my parents wouldn't be happy about that...or Brian and Sharon (Erin's parents). So I refrained. Probably a good thing. After that, we drove over a few hills to the other side of Wellsboro to crash Aubrey and Riah's anniversary celebration. They've held one every year since they got married 3 years ago, and it's really just an excuse to party. The most interesting thing that I saw while there was Riah's pomegranate tree. I've always wanted to grow pomegranates, but didn't think it was possible here. So now I've added "pomegranate grove" to the garden I want to plant someday. Also on the list are strawberries, sweet potatoes, blueberries, kale, garlic, beets, broccoli, and spinach. So if pomegranates were the most interesting thing, contra dancing was the most fun thing! I could do that every week. For once there were way more guys than girls, so there was no lack of partners, from my vantage point anyhow. The guys probably felt differently. 

Sunday morning was church, then we came home and, in my case, slept. After eating that is. Sunday was also Misha's birthday, so we had a special lunch in her honor. Then we embarked on the monumental task of making everyone look fit for a ball, since we were heading back up to Corning for the evening to celebrate Brooke's birthday, which was themed as a ball. Getting ready was interesting, and long, but the results were pretty good, because we ended up with 2 guys in suits, and 5 girls in gowns with nice hair. Dad reminded us that if we were Southern Baptists we would dress up like this every single Sunday. I'm glad I'm not a Southern Baptist. I love dressing up, but I'm very thankful I can wear jeans to church when I want to (which is pretty much the whole winter...brrr!).

Brooke was amazing and beautiful (all the girls looked beautiful, and all the guys looked spiffy). I can't believe she is 13. Mostly because she seems like she is older than that already. The ball itself, in true Slack-party-fashion, was terrifically fun. They had rented a hall, and it was dim and wonderfully cool (the AC in the car broke yesterday...talk about not fun. I now appreciate AC more than ever). And we danced and danced and danced. It started out with a couple line dances to get people warmed up, and then Mikaela and Josiah proceeded to teach us how to swing dance. Mikaela started the whole thing with several rules though, once of which was that girls couldn't dance together, and boys couldn't dance together (ha ha), unless you were under the age of 10. So that made it more fun lol. Truly though, it's not much fun dancing with another girl since I always have to be the guy...seeing as I'm tall.

So pretty soon, the room was filled with swing dancers doing triple-steps to swing dance music. I danced with Daniel, Jared, Joseph, Josiah, Isaac, and numerous little children who just wanted to be picked up and swung around. I don't blame them. Being swung is the closest thing to flying. Which I would know, because Mikaela did it to me haha.

Then I came home and went to bed wishing there could be a dance of some sort, whether contra or swing or any other type, every single weekend. Or at least once a month. :) But writing that is cliche, because I write that after every dance I've ever been to.