cowgirl + ruffles?!??

Let me be honest, can I?

I was not looking forward to today.  Nope.  Wanted to soooooo stay in bed.

Why?

Our little girl is turning 16 years old in 17 days.  Truthfully, I am excited about this fact.  She already has been asked out on a date for her 16th birthday, how convenient that her bday falls on a Saturday!  Truthfully, I am excited for her about that too!  But when I was originally told about this date... it was to be a classic dinner and a movie.  By just this past Monday, said 16th birthday date morphed into a whole different thing... a FORMAL!  WHAT?!

I must add here that I did some of my best mommy acting on Monday, like grinning from ear to ear as Savannah giggled and excitedly told me about the change in plans.  I even gooshed and hugged her, hand over my OSCAR now!!!

So today was formal shopping day.  NOW do you understand why I wanted to hibernate? Whimper?!

Shopping for a modest formal dress needed in 17 short days is a task with so many odds against it I feared there was NO WAY for this day to end happy.

But, thanks to my sil, Kim, and one simple suggestion called a 'shrug' (aka also obviously called a bolero by fancy folks at the mall)... Savannah and I had an amazing day!

In fact, I am bragging here, please forgive me, I must... we found TWO dresses.  Yep!

In fact, we bought an adorable black dress... decided to double check a few more stores after that and found THE one.  And hold on to your hats because you will never believe these facts:  #1, I... ME... the mom... picked out the 2nd dress that daughter originally turned her nose up at but after trying irt on, swooned over and actually cried tears of joy over.  To Savannah's defense, the dress did look a tad lifeless on the hanger BUT the color was amazing and she had not gone for any color all day so I had to at least try and force her mercilessly to take it with her into the dressing room, #2 unbelievable fact: the soon to be dream dress was on a 50% clearance rack.  

One second,

sniffle,

while Savannah was crying with joy in the fitting room, spinning around in her dream dress... which did I mention that I picked out... I also was crying tears of joy.  Tears of joy for a clearance dress.  Tears of joy that did not last in my eyes past the shoe department.  Nope.  

Case in point:

 Savannah saw these shoes from half way across the store and screamed.  I knew I was in BIG trouble then!  Because I had just made her raise her hand and promise me that we could go home now and do the accessory shopping on another day.  She promised me.  She hugged me.  She sealed her promise with a kiss...
she lied!

But when she swiped these amazing heels, and I do mean HEELS, off the shelf... I melted, not because there was no way these beauties were on clearance too... but because they were t.h.e. perfect shoe for her dress and I had no defense what.so.ever against them. 

So, she won't let me show anything yet except for the shoes, and the amazing material of her dress... I think from this little teaser you can see we did a fine, fine, job of formal shopping today.

And lest I have not completely crossed over into obnoxious... I must add that dear daughter wanted a long formal in black... no color... simple, plain.  But happy tears sprang to her eyes over a short (but of COURSE modest length), sassy, RED little number instead!  mmwahhahahahahaha!!
Now we only need to decide on a hairdo, sparkle (aka jewelry), and a pedicure is a must for her shoes... I may be rightly accused for forcing her into a manicure too!   This cowgirl is gonna clean up nice, snicker!