Homecoming!

A few weeks back my oldest came home and told me the high school student council had almost unanimously chosen Ben as the Kindergarten crown bearer for our school's Homecoming celebration. 

While I was so honored an proud of the kids for choosing Ben,  I have to admit, I was in a bit of a panic. 

Anytime Ben gets anywhere near that football field, he thinks it is an opportunity for him to run for a pretend touchdown.  All I could picture was Ben spiking the crown in the end zone after he took off down the field with it. 

Before I even had confirmation from the school about it, I went to our Special Ed Director to get her opinion.  She also had a few concerns but it was decided that they would practice with Ben (and the little girl) during some of his down time at school and if the worst that happened was him taking off with the crown,  well, it would not be the end of the world. They also had video from a past year's Homecoming that they could use as video modeling for Ben, so he would know what was expected.  We did not want to set him up to fail, so we felt that giving him a little more help to know what was expected would help him to succeed. 

So finally it was Homecoming night.  The temps were supposed to be 40's so we layered Ben up. with some nice warm pj's under his dress pants and sweater.  He was pretty excited during the first half of the game and did not want to sit for us.  When it came to for them to line up and get their flowers on, Ben was more than ready to go.  The Special Ed Director was even there to help the two little ones get ready.   Ben got his pillow, just like he had practiced, but then they were thrown a loop.

The pillow was for the queen's crown, not the king's crown.  Ben was just expected to carry the King's crown in his hand.  At first Ben did not want to give up the pillow, but finally agreed when he was given the crown instead. 

They marched right out to the first hash mark on the field just as they had been taught with Ben only turning around to peek at the crowd once.  He stood pretty still ((at least as still as he can stand on one place) once they got where they needed to go.   But everyone was clapping as they announced candidates names over the speaker and his hands were full.  So he popped the crown on his head.  It was cute.I think he wanted to clap too!

 

After they announced the King and Queen, who just happen to be cousins and (distance cousins to our family) they took some group photos.  Ben did pretty good with them too, but still had to add his own flair to a couple photos, like this one:

Nothing like a good "Home Alone" face in a Homecoming photo.

The next night was the Homecoming dance. 

 I took John to get photos with his class, while Randy got Ben ready.  

 The freshman boys were looking very handsome!

 

Then it was off to school to take group photos of the royalty.  Ben did very good once he figured out what was going on, and cooperated beautifully.

 

 He even helped out when the King was not smiling,  by reaching over and giving him a tickle. 

 It worked!

 Then Ben wanted to take photos with everyone.  Here is one with his big brother.  He even photo bombed a couple other groups photos, and they all welcomed him to stay.

But once the lights went off and the music came on, he decided it was time to dance!  Both the crown bearers had fun dancing with the Homecoming Queen!

The next night while I was going through the photos, Ben came up behind me while this photo was on my computer and signed and said, "Mom more dance, PLEASE".  I tried to dance with him but he wanted to go back to Homecoming.  Sorry buddy.  We will just have to find some place else for you to dance. 

In the end I am just so glad we did it.  There were moments, when I thought it would be a disaster.  But Ben really stepped up and raised the bar again, by doing a great job while being really cute (in my biased opinion).