It's taken me 3 days to be able to post this... 2 days to think it was funny and 1 day to procrastinate.
Sunday was Stake Conference in our new stake. Our ward was assigned the 9am session so Seth left an hour early to get us seats in the chapel (we hoped). Colton does so much better when we're sitting in pews; he's more contained. Unfortunately there were no more seats (even at 8:00) so we were sitting in the first overflow area - 2 rows behind the big aisle.
About 30 min or so into the conference Colton slipped between the chairs in front of us and stood in the aisle way of the chapel. I got up to get him and instead of just going out the side door he ran all the way across the back part of the chapel. At that point he could see me coming so he took off down the side aisle, headed straight for the stand. Of course I'm still in the back (feeling mortified) and I realized that if he saw me coming he would probably keep going - So I hid behind the entrance-way and peeked around the corner just in time to see him running across the front aisle (in front of the speaker). He turned the corner to come back up the aisle (towards where we were sitting) and about half-way up I came out from my hiding place to snatch him up. He took one look at me and raced back towards the stand and to my SHOCK and HORROR ran up onto the stage/stand. There was a youth choir sitting up there and he managed to get a few rows into the choir loft. He found a pretty young girl and then sat on her lap!
I had no choice but to walk up onto the stand and get him down. As I was walking up all I could think was "Don't trip!" My face was about as red as it could get. Oh and the speaker (during this whole time) was speaking about teaching our families in our homes i.e. family home evening, family scripture time etc... I had to sit on the stand, next to the speakers, in order to get close enough to him and the young woman had to carry him over a few rows to hand him to me.
Needless to say we walked straight out the side door and if I had had my keys with me we probably would have kept walking all the way to the car. I was so mad I couldn't speak and I'm sure Colton could sense it so he just looked up at me and said, "Sorry mommy." I'm sure that nothing I said sank in and if given the chance he'd do it again.
All I could think was Queen Creek North Stake, meet Colton Traeger! You'll get to know him pretty well while we're living here and yes things like this seem to happen a lot when Colton is around.
Well, the rest of conference was pretty smooth. The Stake President got up to give the final talk and much to my dismay spoke about "the little boy and his mother who had to get him down from the stage..." I can't remember much after that - I was hoping that no one knew who we were or where we were sitting. He did mention though that he was the same way as a child except for that his clothes probably had grass stains on it from wrestling in the grass after church. He thanked all the parents for bringing their children :)
In case you're wondering Colton was not harmed after church, but only because another speaker asked us to "leave conference better than we came!"
