For Trent's drill in September he had a military ball he had to go to. He told me about said ball just a few days before. It is a formal event. I own nothing formal. So it was a race to find something that would work. I also had to find a babysitter for the kids here and one for Malia in the Fort Lewis area since she is still nursing and I couldn't leave her.
Finding a babysitter was the easiest part of the whole thing. I asked my good friend, Laurie, if she'd like to come stay with the kids again. She stayed with them while we were in Maui so I wasn't sure if she'd want to spend anymore time with them or not. The county fair was also that weekend. I had planned to take the kids to it and I knew Laurie was going to go to it. So I asked her if she'd be willing to take the kids, I'd give her money and let her use our suburban. She was more than happy to do it! The kids love her. They had so much fun at the fair! She took lots of pictures, though I don't have them yet...that may be a post all on it's own. They rode rides, saw animals, saw a couple animal shows, and went fishing. They brought home like 5 good sized trout. Carter was in heaven! Andrew still asks if Trent and I can go away so Laurie can come back and take them to the fair.
I asked my friend, Erin, if they'd be able to watch Malia. Her daughter, Maija, was more than happy to watch her!
With that taken care of all I needed to do was find something to wear. Sigh...much easier said than done. I looked on Thursday, but found nothing. We don't really have many options around here, not even in Wenatchee, which is an hour away. Saturday morning, the day of the ball, we went to the (tiny) mall in Wenatchee to the formal shop. We found a dress that would kinda work. It would need something to cover the not existing sleeves, but we found something at Ross (which is in the mall) that worked. It was way more expensive that I would have like to spend on a dress for one evening. Then again, this isn't the first military ball I've needed a gown for and I'm sure it won't be the last, so we bought it. It needs to be altered still, it WAY too long and way too low cut. I had to pin the shrug to keep things covered.
We made it to the ball, only to find it was a RETENTION ball. All the speeches were on rejoining the guard, not at all like the other military balls I've been to. Usually there is just a dinner, socializing, and dancing. Not a big to do about reenlisting. There was lots of socializing, with people neither of us knew and a whole lot of drinking. One of the guys giving a speech was almost too drunk to get through it, he stumbled through the whole thing. Trent's unit had a keg out in the parking lot, we did go out to visit with them for a little bit. People were pretty drunk by the time dinner started. We took off before the dancing even started. We needed to go get Malia, who was 45 mins away at Erin's house.
September in our little town means harvest time. I LOVE being surrounded by apple orchards (cherries and pears, as well as grape vineyards). We are lucky enough to know people who have orchards who let us come pick the most coveted apples right off their trees, honeycrisp. They are so delicious!
Kitty sure is glad that Malia can't crawl yet. She LOVES Bagheera and he loves to tease her. He'll come just close enough to her that she can touch her, then take off.
Speaking of kitty...here's some funny pictures of him this month.
Have I mentioned how much I love working with the youth in our ward...I LOVE it! They are such good kids and I love being with them. For the combined Young Men/Young Women activity this month we had a color war. We filled old socks with colored chalk then essentially threw them at each other. I tried to make an organized game of steal the flag mixed with dodge ball out of it. Didn't work, it turned into pure chaos. I had no intentions of getting in the middle of that mess...my kids had other ideas...and I admit, it was totally fun! When we got home Carter jumped in the shower and then started to scream 'the water's red!' Totally freaked him out.
At the end of September Trent's brother-in-law died. Tim was married to Trent's oldest sister, Karina. Though they supposedly got a divorce 2 years ago. They told everyone they did, but they didn't. It was too expensive is what I hear...Anyway, Tim went out of a ride on his motorcycle, stopped to take a rest. He fell asleep and never woke up. He had a heart attach of some sort. So we ended up taking a trip to UT for the funeral.
While at my parents house my sisters thought it would be fun to feed Malia strawberries and whipped cream. Well, she loved it and made a huge mess with it!
The first few days after Andrew started school I'd often find him like this:
Here's some other pictures of Malia I found on my phone.
My brother, Jason, sent Hanna and Malia these dresses last year for Christmas. Before Malia was even born. Hanna was so excited when Malia finally fit in the dress. Though by that time Hanna had just about outgrown hers.
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