Handsome is as handsome does

I think the above picture is Nick's nod to Gus from Psych. Season 5 showed up streaming suddenly--apparently 6 begins next week. We love that show. It's not perfect for sure and we all make a loud sound to cover up the curse word in the title song, but we watch it as a family for the most part.
But here's my nod to Nick. He's really good about being silly for pictures for me since he uses them on facebook all the time but I thought I'd put some of them here. Nick has been working 20 hours a week since school started 2 months ago, pretty much to fund his truck and his social life. We just can't afford things like that, but he handles it all really well. He doesn't love his job but he's a hard worker and now he is more determined than ever to do well in college. I think it's great for him to see how hard jobs like these are though--it will make him more compassionate later.

The above pictures are him in his choir suit and below it was salad day at school and his grade was the Caesar salad.

I think here I was trying to get Nick to stop being my "advisor". He might be a little (ahem, cough, ahem) bossy with the other kids and we've taken to teasing him about being my "parenting advisor" because I could obviously not do this job without his help. Very often he is helpful...but sometimes not so much. He definitely has a take-charge personality which will absolutely bless him in life as he learns to temper it a tiny bit. Love you Nick!

He has enjoyed moving here SO much! There are so many lovely young ladies and he loves going out on dates. We've set the rule for him not to date anyone more than twice in a row and we have the double date rule but I don't think I expected him to be quite as social as he is. It's almost like another job for him! He loves being with friends. Below are pictures Jer took of him and his date to Homecoming. She is a girl from another ward.

She is a really nice girl and I'm glad he went to Homecoming with someone that has the same standards. They went with a large group of church kids to take pictures, eat out, then to the dance. Nick was there for 10 minutes and realized it was just a (in his own words) "grind-fest" and they decided to leave and go to the Stake dance that was going on at the same time. Unfortunately that ended early so they had nowhere to go while they waited to meet up with their group at someone else's house later so they came to our house and Jer took a couple pictures for me. I felt really bad Nick just had his truck with him because he had no room to take some other kids that would have liked to have left the dance and gone with them. We had a modest fashion show a weekend or two after this Homecoming thing for the Stake just before the Relief Society General broadcast. It was great to see modest dresses but a little weird to know some of those same youth in their modest dresses were participating just a week or two before in the "grind-fest". We might be missing the greater danger here--skirt to the knee?... uh, grinding? I think some parents would have had a heart attack to see the quality of school dances these days. Now I am stressing about Nick and Prom. He doesn't want to spend $50 a ticket for a place he can't stay more than 10 minutes--what to do?

Jr and Nick are teasing me by refusing to smile. I think they both look like missionaries in these pictures. But happier in the one below. So handsome! And although this post was mostly about Nick, I am very proud of both of these boys. I remember that story at conference way back about those ladies comparing their beautiful jewelry and this lady had none but basically said her sons were her jewels. That is exactly how I feel about them (and all my kids of course). I may never have anything worth much in the worldly sense but I have the most precious things imaginable in my family.