The party was jumping

So yesterday, I headed off to the girl's dance early to help with setup. I was assigned the task of hanging balloons around the cafeteria. I thought it'd be an easy task until I realized I had to pull the balloons from this tangled bouquet:

omg.

At first I was determined to carefully untangle all these ribbons but after what felt like too many minutes gone by, I just started cutting them from the giant bouquet and I Got R Done.

There was so much food--plenty of sweets:

Hey look at those awesome cupcakes! A mom who loves her girl must have made those!

And savories:

Now that's a party!

And right before the kids came in, the DJ played GnR's "Patience". Which was somehow, ridiculously perfect for the lull right before the dance. Here is the cafeteria transformed:

The balloons make it, right?

The kids started in little groups, first having some food and drink but as the music played, the kids started to dance here and there. What I found amazing was when this song "Cupid Shuffle" played, everybody was on the floor and danced some known choreography to it:

I thought I happened upon a flash mob. But one of the girl's friends explained that it's a very popular song/dance to know around here. She said it was like that "electric song" that people dance to at weddings. After that brought everyone to the floor, most of the kids stayed and kept dancing.

Impressively, these kids were pretty pumped about other songs too, like the Black Eye Peas' "I Gotta Feeling":


Even this girl had a pretty good time:


I only ventured once calling her out as she passed me by (in hindsight, I'm sure she was hoping I'd stay silent as a statue). When she heard me call her name, she shrank back wide-eyed, as if I were a weird guy in a trench coat promising free candy in the trunk of my car. What, Mom? she whispered through her pressed mouth. What was I expecting? Well if this was just a couple of years back, she would have hugged me, I swear. Oh well. Did you try any of the food? She sighed, I will and scampered off, relieved. I went on to another assigned task of organizing cut-outs and before I knew it, the dance was over.

Not only did the girl survive the dance with her mom there as a chaperone, she said she had a great time.

And no worries, I did get my hug later.