Squad

Jalen went to high school with a few of his friends from Primary School, and he is still best mates with one of his friends that he went to Kinder with. It's funny watching them grow up together as his friend Rani is so much taller than him now.  I love that he is still friends with friends from Primary School and whenever I see Rani he always says 'hi Mum' and 'love you Mum' when he leaves which cracks me up.

I'm sure it's a teenage thing (and probably more a teenage boy thing) but Jay didn't talk much about his friends at high school until last year.  I knew that he had become friends with people who he didn't go to primary school with, but I didn't hear much about them until the middle of grade 10.  He started to get invited to different birthday dinners and I would tell him off for not talking to me about his friends as I had no idea who he was going to have dinner with.  He didn't think it was a big deal but he finally started to tell me more about his new friends that he had made.  It was nice to hear that he was friends with lots of girls.

It was so nice to see him and his friends all dressed up together at the Leaver's Dinner last year and I was so happy to hear that most of his close friends were going to the same 'college' together this year (year 11 and 12).

Over the summer Jay would say things like 'squad are getting together sometime this week' and it would crack me up as I had no idea what 'squad' was!  When I asked Jay what it was supposed to mean he would laugh at me as I'm obviously very old and not cool anymore, if I don't know what squad meant :)  I wonder what Harri will be calling his group of friends by the time he is in grade 10. I'm doubting 'squad' will be cool by then :)

It turns out that everyone in squad thinks Kobe is pretty cute, so I love teasing Jay that the only reason they are friends with him is so they can hang out with Kobe as well.  During the holidays sometimes we would get home and Jay and 'squad' would all be at our house hanging out and Kobe would think it was the best thing ever.  He openly admitted that he had a little crush on one of Jay's friends :)   Kobe makes us laugh as he loves that Jay has a 'squad' and always tells me that he has a squad at school as well.

Harri pretended that he was cranky that they took a photo on his iPad without him knowing, but we know he really loved it.

It's fun seeing photos of 'squad' pop up on my Instagram feed.  Jay said to me yesterday that he thinks he's been in 'town' more this year than in his whole life, and I have no doubt it's true as squad are always going to hang out in town to take photos after school.   I love that Jay loves taking photos as much as I do now.  Apparently it's cool to stick out their tongue or put their thumb up in front of their faces for pics :)

Jay and his friend Mel were both in a production at school and it was nice to have squad (see how I just say that now like it's normal!) come and watch them in it.  This was after the show.

Even though it's normal for me to say 'squad' to Jay now, apparently it's not cool when I say 'I'm going out for tea with my squad tonight' :)  I think I just have to leave it to the young ones.

I love the age that Jay is at the moment, but it's also a scary age as they have to think about the future and what they want to do.  I'm glad that Jay has another year with squad before they have to think about 'real life' and what they are going to do after year 11 and 12 (thanks for letting me use your pics squad!).