Dress Day

Saturday was dress day with Sal.  Our holiday traditions are very set in stone with Don and Sal.  Doing this without Don was going to be hard, sad, and unfamiliar.  We lost our bartender.  Good God the cruelty of it all!  Between Sal, Mark, the girls, and I, we came up with a plan.  We were to keep the objective of the day the same, but take a different way of getting to the end result.  We managed to do everything we set out to do with only a few tears at the end.

 

First on the agenda was picking Sal up, and heading to the mall.  Generally, Sal and Don would have shopped for the girl’s dresses prior to the dress day.  We would arrive, eat, drink, and be merry, while the girls anxiously waited for the time.  Somewhere between the second cocktail and 235th cashew, Sal would say, “Well, shall we bring the dresses out?”  The girls would act all cool.  Like, sure if you want to, I guess we could do that.  Then they would rip them open and run to try them on. 

It was getting to the time this year anyway, that Sal could no longer shop for Adrienne without her.  It’s just to hard to fit her these days!  So, we did the shopping together and it was perfect.  The little girls went first.  Lexi loved having a say in her dress.  She picked out about 20 to try on, and of course ended up with the first one!  We let Sof try some on too because she wanted to!  We knew in the end we would just pick one that matched Lexi’s!  She was loving it, and told me she didn’t need any help.

    

     This is a preview of my life for the next 15 years!  Both girls ended up with dresses perfect for them. 

    

I know it looks like Sof was miserable, but really she just didn’t want to take the dress off!

Once that was done they got to go with daddy to the play area and to get a snack.  That made everyone happy!  Adrienne, Sal, and I headed off in search of the perfect dress for Adrienne.  That is no small feat let me tell you.  She ended up loving two, but the one she decided on is totally gorgeous on her!

 

Mission accomplished.

Once the dresses were behind us, it was off to find Aunt Sal a tree!  It was the first time my kids have been on a Christmas tree lot.  We were hoping for blizzard conditions to really give them the whole experience, but alas, it was a balmy 55 degrees! 

    

Mission #2 accomplished!

We took the tree back to Sal’s and carefully placed it perfectly straight in the stand.

For the record, we missed our bartender, but we did okay on our own.  We managed to open the wine all by ourselves.  Heehee.

Sal always has a cooking project for the girls.  This year was cupcakes with all the perfect decorations!

    

Mission #3 complete.

While they were baking we had a little silliness.  Sof was showing us her moves from hippity hop.  They’re really something…

We had a redo fashion show…

Mark had to get in on it with his new shoes.

Those are reeeaaalll nice Clark.

At some point someone decided the trunk on the tree was too long.  Sal disappeared to the basement and returned with a saw. 

What followed was cooking oil, a lot of laughter, and finally a shorter tree.  If I’m being honest, I didn’t notice one lick of difference once it was back in the stand.

We had some pizza and Sof fell asleep.

Last project of the night was decorating the tree.  Mark put the lights on, Sof woke up, and the girls learned what tinsel is. 

    

We had a wonderful time, and the girls will file it in their holiday tradition memories.  Don was never far from our thoughts, and I know he would love what we did with the day.  Christmas Eve will be another challenge of keeping old traditions alive, while making new ones that fit our new situation.  It will be perfect in it’s own way, just like dress day was.