I'm alive again.

Well, that was a break. We've all been better for about a week now, for which I am exceedingly thankful. We had Hudson's sixth birthday, then Helena's fourth a week later, and I will be posting the birthday interviews this week at some point. Meanwhile, I wanted to make sure I left evidence of Saturday night. We spent the weekend with the Grandparents Pate. They have season tickets to the Lamar University Cardinals basketball games. We went with them, and Harper and Hudson got invited to participate in a Sports Clips sponsored dance competition during one of the time-outs in the first quarter. Hudson thought he probably did NOT want to participate, until the sweet student volunteer recruiting kids told him there was a PRIZE involved. "WHAT is the prize?" Hudson queried, still very much on the fence. Harper decided she would definitely do it, so Hudson decided to go along. The guy told them they would be dancing to a song called Gang Man  or Nan or something or other, and was met with blank stares from my kids, and also from me.  I thought about suggesting that we could definitely boogie down to our timeline song, from the beginning of recorded history up to Prince Henry Founds School of Navigation, and that we knew the sign language, and that it would take approximately 15 minutes, but instead there was 30 seconds of this:

 

 Just before they walked out, Hudson thought he probably and most decidedly did NOT want to participate. He definitely did NOT want to play one of the guitars. I convinced him he could go out with his pirate do-rag and do some tae-kwon-do, and guess what? Little man WON the dance off!! The prize was a large thermos cooler WITH a straw, a Sports Clips t-shirt (size adult XL which we passed on to Grandfather Pate), a piece of beef jerky (also given to Grandfather Pate), a tube of men's shave gel (given to the Daddy) and a FREE haircut! Harper and the other boy (his name was Johny) got a pair of Lamar University sunglasses and a lanyard necklace thing. I'm not sure the judging had any sort of objective criteria, considering Johny, as you can see from the photos, had some MOVES (look at him all Michael Jackson on his toes in the second photo!), and Harper, who did her ($500) cartwheel in the midst of her impressive choreography, actually performed better than Hudson. All I can figure is that they decided Hudson was the one most in need of a free haircut.

Anyway, it kind of felt like one of those moments Donald Miller talks about in one of his books when the family jumps off the dock into the water just to make things memorable. Dancing like no one is watching in front of a crowd of a thousand people definitely counts as a memory, I think.  I will be back soon. Maybe tomorrow.