Fancy Panera Bread Dance Party USA

So on Saturday night we went to a Naval Academy Ball. For those of you not familiar with the area I am living in (the place I grew up in), I live about 40 minutes south of Annapolis, Maryland. The US Naval Academy is located near downtown Annapolis (near all the old shops and the docks). It's a beautiful campus. So I am pretty accustomed to seeing midshipmen walking around the mall and downtown on the weekends. But once a year, they throw a fancy dress ball. Last year had a bigger turn out - but this year was just as fun!

Alyssa, Christy and I started our afternoon off at 2ish. We planned on casually spending the afternoon doing our hair, makeup, nails, etc. Christy is amazing with hair and she gave me beautiful spirals curls with a flat iron. Magic. I did my nails and Alyssa did my makeup. Maybe they were trying to tell me something (like I suck at doing my make up and hair? haha) but I figured they probably just were having fun and I was the lucky guinea pig. They both did a great job though. After getting ready for four hours (seriously, we left the house at about 6:30), we were starving. Literally, I thought I would die. So we went to Panera Bread in Prince Frederick.

That was fun. Everyone stared and several people asked which high school was holding prom that night. We graciously answered all inquiries then quietly mocked those people...seriously, I KNOW we did NOT look 16. Come on now. Still, it was fun and none of us spilled on our dresses!! Of course, Christy and I did resort to using paper napkin bibs, but you do what you have to do.

So after we gorged ourselves on soup, salads, sandwiches, parfait and three bottles of water (that would be between the three of us, not separately), we headed off to pick up our new friend Silvia. She is from Spain and is very nice and very funny. Then we headed to the dance.

I forgot to mention that as we were leaving P-Bread, we saw some guys dressed....differently. One was wearing an old basketball uniform with a sweatband and poofy hair and the other had no shirt on and was wearing black tight jeans with a chain wallet in his pocket. Alyssa made me roll the window down so she could howl at them. They were probably teenagers so I'm glad we were in motion and could use Bullet to make a somewhat speedy getaway.

It was at a stake center and we were some of the first to arrive. So we hit the dance floor and got the party started. That's just how we do. We also took a lot of silly, somewhat unattractive photos. We got progressively hyper and crazy throughout the night...but we had a blast and people didn't seem to mind that much. We had a spot on the dance floor where we could feel the AC from the vent in the ceiling and we planted ourselves there and danced away. We were lucky it wasn't too crowded because we were able to claim that spot fairly easily every time we wanted it.

There was also a proposal. Yeah. I'm just going to say that it was sweet and leave it at that. Although, photographic evidence of how we really felt about it was captured (see slide show).

Another great part was when a boy came and asked Christy to swing dance. It went like this...

boy: do you want to dance?
C: i don't really know how.
b: i can teach you.
C: i get dizzy.
b: i won't spin you that much.
C: i don't have my shoes on.
b: i won't step on your feet.
C: well....okay.

Note Christy's enthusiasm. Note the boy's relentless pursuit of a dance partner. Please also keep in mind that Alyssa and I were standing there laughing the entire time because Christy used the excuse, "I get dizzy." Then we took pictures of them dancing while we laughed. The boy of course was oblivious to this because we are just that sneaky and awesome.

And now pictures.