Evan's Day

Yesterday (without my camera, sadly), Evan and I celebrated his birthday. I'll try to paint some pictures with words.

The day started out by me making him go to swim practice. His back has been sore again (I can't remember if I reported here that he's recovering from a stress fracture) so I didn't make him go earlier in the week, but thought he ought to go yesterday. I dropped him off at the pool about 5 minutes early, then I went home, grabbed a shower, printed out agendas for my meeting at 10:15 and ran back to get him.

I thought immediately that something was weird because usually he is outside waiting for me, chomping at the bit to go home. Not so. I waited a few minutes and didn't see him, then I suddenly noticed him at the back of the pool on a lounge chair, like he'd apparated there or something, because I had NOT seen him walk across the pool deck. I called out and he came to the car. Something still seemed strange. Then I noticed that he wasn't wet.

Turns out, and this just cracks me up, that because he was a couple minutes early for practice, he went and laid down on the lounge for a minute. He then proceeded to SLEEP THROUGH THE PRACTICE!! No one noticed him laying there. He woke up about a minute before I saw him, which is why he seemed to just appear out of nowhere. Too funny. What a start to the day. It's so surreal to watch him become so typically teenagery--sleeping on a dime and all that.

While I was at my meeting, he stayed awake and organized a party day with two of his best pals. It gives me such a happy heart to tell this story because he's known these guys since he was 3 or 4. We did a little home playgroup/preschool together many moons ago and they've just always been friends. The fact that he wanted to celebrate his 15th birthday with these two, his fellow Musketeers, helps me know that our decision to settle in this neighborhood, this little house, this ward and all that, was truly the right thing. Lifelong friends are rare and precious.

Lunch at Famous Dave's was punctuated by one of the boys sampling the hottest sauce on the table and living through it and lots of other laughs.  There was much of shooting the wrappers of drinking straws at foreheads and quoting from The Emperor's New Groove (perhaps the greatest quoting movie EVER) and playing of the quiz game I keep on my phone. I raised my coolness factor by blasting my classic rock-out playlist in the car and giving them 10 bucks for the arcade at the movie theater.

The movie was X-Men: First Class which had plenty of action, a pretty good plot that significantly improved my understanding of the Cuban Missile Crisis (I always did suspect that Mutants were behind it) and the fun of watching Michael Fassbender (the new Mr. Rochester) and James McAvoy (Jane Austen's Crush in Becoming Jane) be all super-heroic. Nice.

The boys came to our house for a bit before heading off to church youth activities, then Ev ended the day by spending the evening at J's house.

It was a good time-I loved being in their company and seeing the world through their eyes.