The last throes of high school ~ mid-June

As the last day of classes approached, James and his friends attempted one last Grad prank, because in their view, the rest of the class was "lame" in planning pranks. (Like, let's all wear tank tops one day...) These guys went all out, plotting over several days. I was glad James asked permission for his plans, and although we weren't thrilled, we could appreciate that they would take full responsibility for their actions. With plans to stay overnight together at a friend's house, they spent the late evening cutting lengths of chain in the basement. Eventually the skill saw (or whatever electric cutting tool they were using) became too loud so they resorted to sawing the chain by hand. They snuck out in the early hours of the night to chain all of the doors leading into the school together with padlocks. Here they are in their stealth-wear...

To make things even more interesting, they applied Saran wrap over each chained door. They also chained the door to the school's small bus.To my knowledge, no neighbours called the police...

Unfortunately for the boys, staff that showed up early immediately called the custodian who lives across the street and is one of the boy's father. He just happened to have a lock cutter, and before all the students arrived, the doors were unwrapped and unlocked, and no one even knew what had transpired in the night. The guys hoped that the staff had overlooked the bus for a later surprise... At least no one got in trouble, and I suppose they will have some special memories to recall. Must have been hard to stay awake that day... an obvious clue as to the guilty party!

When school was out for exams, we finally allowed James to receive the gift of his Papa's pick-up truck, which had been waiting for him for some time at Nana and Papa's house. We are all grateful for their generosity. :)

As predicted, James is not so easy to find these days with his new found freedom. We were amazed that his first day off from school, he was not home in the early morning. Apparently he went to the gym with a friend to lift weights. We weren't sure which shocked us more... that he was up early by choice or that he was at a gym?! Must have been an anomaly as he hasn't done either since. :)