A Night of Excellence

On September 27th, Vance's work threw a ball (A Night of Excellence) at Grand America to announce their new CEO. I was so excited to have this opportunity to get all dressed up fancy with Vance. Ever since our wedding, I have been wanting some excuse to see him in a tux and have me right there next to him all dressed up as well. There's just something about a tux! Our biggest problem was finding something for each of us to wear. Since I am pregnant with an obvious "bump" I knew there was a good chance none of my dresses I had would fit me, and we really did not want to spend too much on a dress, and $60 to rent a tux. Vance was talking to his dad one night and he mentioned the ball. His dad told him that he has two tuxes and he would be coming to visit the weekend of the ball, so he would bring them. We were so relieved that we were getting a free tux for him to wear! In looking for a dress for me to wear, I was going to borrow one, but my darn legs are too long, so it was too short on me. I ended up wearing a skirt I already had and finding a black shirt at Ross to go with it. It wasn't exactly what I had originally wanted, but I ended up being pretty happy with it! As far as Vance's tux went, we got it Friday night and when he tried it on, it was too big! I was soooo bummed. So saturday morning while Vance was finishing up some homework, I started calling around to find a tux to rent. We had to stop at my mom's for something, and we just mentioned the whole tux issue. She told us that Mike's old tux from high school was in the closet but she wasn't sure if it would work or not. She pulled it out, Vance tried it on, and it fit! And he looked AMAZING! I was soooooo super excited! We ended up needing to rent a shirt, vest, and bow tie, but the best part of it all is Mike said he could keep the tux! Anyways, after major trauma with my hair, we were finally ready to go. We didn't think we had time to worry about pictures before, so we thought we would just worry about it afterwards (never a good idea). When we got there, we ate an amazing meal, then played Blackjack for hours. Yes, we gambled (both first-timers!). They gave us each a bunch of chips to gamble with so we could win tickets to enter different contests. They were giving away tons of amazing prizes so we wanted to enter as many tickets as possible. I have to say, that I can now see why gambling is so addicting. IT WAS FUN!! I could never understand doing it with your own real money though. Anyways, we ended up not wining anything (that was our punishment I guess!), and it was all over way too fast. On our way home, we stopped by the conference center and took some quick pictures. We were in a huge hurry because we didn't want to keep my parents up too late with Mason, so the pictures did not turn out like we wanted. In fact, I was pretty frustrated with most of them. By the way, Vance took tons of pics of me while he was getting the settings right on the camera, but I figure that we don't post too many pictures of us, it's always mostly Mason. So for this post...what the heck...why not post them! My hot, sexy man in a tux! Me and my "bling!"