Moonlight Serenade...sounds romantic!

Every year at my alma mater high school, the jazz band has a fundraiser where they have a fancy dinner, a floor show, lots of music and dancing. Tickets sell fast for this event! It's called "Moonlight Serenade" and is supposedly so romantic and filled with sentimentality for those of us who once attended dear old Davis High.

When Rachel, my sister, was a senior in high school a couple years ago, she actually took part in this as one of the prestigious Moonlight Singers. She is good, I'm not going to lie. So we make it a point to acquire tickets and attend. It's kind of fun to get dressed up and go to a nice dinner and then do some dancing. Not my typical hey-let's-go-on-a-date, but once in awhile, it's kind of fun.

A little history: Moonlight Serenade 2007 was somewhat disastrous. Don't get me wrong, the night was a lot of fun. Rachel took one of our friends she had her eye on, and he willingly agreed to come along for the festivities. And I took my back-and-forth boyfriend (we were in the "friends" stage at the time...but you know I wanted more...I always wanted more! Good thing he's married now and that rollercoaster ride is over!). We had a lovely time. And in the week that followed, both Rachel and I discovered that our dates had had girlfriends at the time they had come with us...huh, a little detail they had forgotten to relay to us, set on perhaps winning their hearts.

Needless to say, both of us were jaded by last year's experience, and we definitely didn't want to repeat it. We discussed it and decided to take friends we thought would enjoy dancing and have fun. I asked one of my friends 5 weeks in advance. Apparently when it got closer, he had gone and gotten himself a girlfriend...so that idea was out. So I asked another guy from our ward who we knew loved to dance. He agreed, and we were set to go. Rachel asked another friend from the ward, and he was pretty sure he could come, but would have to wait until it came right down to it (he's working on a Master's/PhD program right now...and it's CRAZY busy!)

Long story short: Our friend in school just couldn't take the huge chunk of time our evening required, and he let us know the day before. We started calling around trying to find someone else, but it was difficult to find a date in that pinch. To make matters even more pressing, the friend I had asked had a problem with some electrical sparks in his house that day and couldn't go either. We were both dateless and struggling, going through our phones frantically. I even considered giving my tickets away. Also, Matt, our brother, was on deck, just in case we couldn't find someone. It sounds silly now, but in that moment, we were both a little stressed and frantic because we didn't want the tickets to go to waste!

Luckily, Rachel found someone she knew as a friend of a friend that she'd come to know in high school. He agreed to go. And after much phone scrolling, I took my friend Ben (see the earlier posts about the guy who came and picked me up from the airport after my trip...oh, and stay tuned for later posts in which he appears). Both of them were such good sports, and we promised not to make them dance...a lot. ;)

Dinner was fun and delicious. We kept talking to the waiters and Ben kept asking them what instrument they played (the regular band students have to help serve at this event as part of their grade). We were laughing about our own high school days and enjoying the music. It was pretty fun! And Rachel's date, Andrew, had fun as well. They even danced with us for a little bit. What good sports!

Then we had to stop at my parents' house and drop something off, so we all went in and my parents met the guys. We played with the dog for a little while and talked about I don't know what, but it was 11:30 before we got out of there. I felt like I was driving home drunk or something. I would like to apologize to the people in my car on the way home that night...and probably the other drivers on the road. I should have sucked up my pride and let someone else take the keys away from me. Thankfully we made it home safely and had had a good time.