Can't Take The Country Out Of The Girl: A volleyball game, a dance, and hail damage

So, it's Al's senior year of middle school and apparently that's a big deal. She has a graduation coming up soon, they are on their "senior trip" now, and last weekend they had their "prom/dance." Several weeks ago they announced the date of the dance, which is when we first realized there was a slight scheduling conflict. The dance was scheduled for last Friday night, which was also the night of our county wide volleyball tournament. Hmmm, what to do? Her first instinct was "forget the dance, we're playing ball!" And, since her choice was to play volleyball we didn't bother shopping for a dress. As time passed, she started toying with the idea that maybe they could go to the dance after the volleyball game and just miss part of the dance. So, maybe we needed to shop for a dress after all. So we did. We spent one whole Saturday at the mall and tried on every dress they had... By this time, though, the sizes were very picked over and the dresses she loved weren't in her size and the dresses in her size she didn't love.

Then it happened. Like a ray of sun shining down from heaven, THE dress was hanging on a rack just waiting for Alex to find it. It was on the wrong rack with lots of other dresses but somehow she found it. Since we were tired and had tried on 4596 dresses that day we were very excited that she had found one. I hadn't bothered looking at the price tag because all the dresses we tried on that day had been in about the same price range and since we were doing our shopping so late most were even on sale. But, the dress sent from heaven above was the only dress in the entire mall that was not on sale. And it was the most expensive one we had tried on that day. Of course, we went ahead and got it cuz that's what you do when you're worn out from dress shopping and this is the 4597th dress you have tried on. And when your daughter puts it on she declares "this is it" and you can almost hear angels singing. Oh and don't forget the ray of light that guided us to it. I paid for the dress and we headed home. And she was happy.

The End.

No, not really.

After we left the euphoria of the "moment of the dress" I came to my senses. In the next couple of days I shook off the haze induced purchase and realized I had just paid a bundle for a dress that she was possibly not even going to get to wear. After all, the volleyball tournament bracket had been posted and at the least they were going to be at the dance for 15 minutes and at the most they were going to be there for an hour. It was time to take the dress back and pay the electric bill.

Now, to find another dress! Ughhh.... She played softball every weekend after the initial dress shopping day and had volleyball every night during the week. On the Wednesday before the dance, and after her sweet dates mother had asked several times what color she was wearing, we decided to lay out of church and try to find a dress.

I told her we would probably get struck by lightning.

I don't suggest laying out of church to go dress shopping. While we didn't get struck by lightning, we did almost get blown away by several waves of tornado-ish storms. We got one call from Tony saying he and Anthony, two dogs, and a cat were heading to the basement. The next call was that the storm they had just weathered was heading toward Knoxville, which is where we were. We continued to get calls throughout the evening to stay put and wait until the storms pass. We found a dress, listened to huge, HUGE hail hit the skylights, ate a Cinnabon, listened to the rain, bought shoes, listened to the wind, bought jewelry and then the mall closed early. We were forced to leave.

We ran to the car in monsoon-like rain and huge lightning streaks. When we turned on the radio we learned that these tornado warnings didn't expire until 1 a.m. What to do? We were 45 minutes from home? Another storm coming through and expected at our mall any minute? So, we drove into the parking garage and hid out in there through the next hail storm. We waited in there until Tony called and told us if we left right then we could probably make it home in between storms. Probably. And we almost did. We got really close to home, encountered a few roads that were closed and had to detour, and it was pouring rain, and lightning was flashing, and Alex was pretty sure she was blinded from one of the lightning flashes. She was begging me to stop at anyone's house. Just pick one. At some point I think I muttered, "This is what happens when you lay out of church." As there were lots of cars trying to get home at that point Alex said, "What do you think all these other people did?" Surely they had committed an infraction as terrible as us? Worse maybe?

We finally made it to Tony's parents house, holed up with them for a little while, then we did make it home between storms. Finally. By about 1o:30. Just in time to weather the last passing storm in the comfort of our own home. Later we found out an EF-4 passed within a few miles of our house and somewhere in the neighborhood of 31 tornadoes had hit in East Tennessee.

But.

We. Got. The. Dress.

We opted for a little less formal dress since she wasn't sure how long she was going to be at the dance but she liked it and it looked beautiful on her.

They played volleyball at 6 and 7.