Had A Ball

(this is the only picture I have for now. I took my friends point and shoot so I did not have to lug my big camera around. I have not gotten my pics off of her camera yet. I don't have many, but I will post what I have when I get them. For now this is all there is.)

Scott and I attended the American Legion Inauguration Ball, In Salute to the Medal of Honor recipients. We scored tickets on Friday the 16th at 7am. I got on line and ordered dresses right away. I ordered two because I figured one of the two would work, but guess what....the dresses showed up Monday at 2pm and neither one of them worked....arghhhhh!!!!! So I called up my friend Sylvia, asked if she could watch Delana for me, I knew I could not go dress hunting with a 2 year old. Sylvia watched Delana while Maelee and I hit the mall. I tried on over 50 dresses. We were there for almost 8 hours. It was torture. I am a plus size gal which makes it very hard to find a dress. Plus I am most comfortable being very very covered up. And that is a hard thing to find these days. It took me 7 hours to realize that the dress for me was the 3rd dress of the 50 I tried on. I had to find a jacket for it though. I found a nice jacket at a dress shop. Funny story about the shop I found it in....

I saw a little dress shop. A nice cute girl greeted me. She was a skinny little nothing girl. I asked her if they sold any women sized dresses. She did not know what I was talking aobut so I said plus sizes. She said, "oh yes, we carry up to size 16." I kind of laughed and cried all at the same time. That little girl has no idea what plus size is. To her surprise, they did have a few dresses that were my size. I did not get my dress there, but I did like my jacket I got.

So now onto the ball ...... we had a great time. Scott was SO HANDSOME!!! We were standing in line for coat check and a gentleman behind us said, "You know the Marines really do have the best looking uniforms." Then a man in front of us turns around, I think he was Navy, and he said "Hey I take offense to that." One look at his uniform and Scott and I had to laugh. The Navy guy had these huge neon orange lapels. Scott really did have the best uniform.

During the reception in the beginning we walked around and everyone was so friendly. A lot of people walked up to Scott, they were very interested in talking to him and asking about his different medals. One of the honories of the Medal of Honor wanted to trade his Medal of Honor with Scott for Scott's Joint Chief Medal. Scott gets to wear a great medal and badge because he worked for the Joint Chief of Staff when he worked for General Pace. Mostly everyone else there were officers, and the people at our table were mostly interested in Scott and his job. They were all so impressed. One officer said to me, "you do realize that your husband is a rock star right?" I was so proud of Scott.

My favorite story of the night: Scott's boss, General Conway, the Commandant of the Marined Corps was one of the guests of honor. One of his office aides was there with him and came up to Scott and told him to make sure we go say hello to the boss. Scott did not want to because he sees him everyday and he wanted to leave the Commandant's time open for others to greet him that never get to see him. But I wanted to go see him. I have only met him once, at Scott's promortion a year ago. I drug Scott up to the Commandant and there was a little line and we stood back waiting. There was a three star General from the Air Force there and he called out to Scott, "Hey Staff Sergeant, come here. I will get you an introduction to the Commandant. I will take care of you." We kind of laughed and Scott said, "actually I see him everyday. The General looked confused. Scott explained that he worked at his house. The general asked what his specialty was and when Scott said cakes he asked him to come work at his house. Then we got up to see the Commandant and the Commandant turned to the other general and said "hey, he works at my house. " The airforce General said, "I know, I am trying to talk him into coming over to my house to work for me." The Commandant got mad and said "hey, he works at my house." It was funny, especially when the Air Force general offered to get us an introduction to the Commandant.

So we did not see the president. He did not make it to our ball. We were hoping for it. President Bush made an appearance at this ball at the last two Inaugurations. No Obama, but we did get to see Marg Helgenberger of CSI. I don't watch the show, but I did recognize her. She was the MC. Then at the end they announced a guest speaker. It was Buzz Aldrin, the astronaut. He gave a wonderful speech about the space program creating dreams and incouraging young children to study science. He talked about how we need to no longer compete with other countries over space programs, instead we need to combine our resources and research with other countries. I thought it was a neat idea.

There was a band there that played, no one famous unless you read Bride Magazine. They were voted number one three years in a row by Bride Magazine. The crowd chuckled when the band was introduced that way.

The night was wonderful. We made it up into the city with no glitches. Smooth traffic and the city was full of so much energy. Everyone was so happy. It was fantastic to be up there. I have to say thank you to my husband. I know he was exhausted and that he took me because I love this kind of thing. I love to get dressed up. I love to be with him and see him in his uniform and dance with him. Scott worked Inaugural events Saturday, Sunday, and Monday night from 4pm until 4am. And then he had to be to work this morning at 4am then go to help a friend out tonight at a dinner party until probably 11pm tonight. So he has been running on very very very little sleep. If he had his way he would have been home Tuesday night catching up on sleep. So thank you Scott for taking your girl out on the town. I loved all of it.