We had fun even though we didn't find what we were looking for.

Dan and Peter headed to Camp Raven Knob on Friday evening for a weekend of camping with the Cub Scouts.  I let Sarah pick where we were going to go for dinner and, as expected, she chose Chick-Fil-A. 

We had a nice dinner and headed home to work on a project.  She wanted to sew.  We got out the unopened sewing kit that Santa brought her last Christmas and laid out all the felt, and thread, and needles, and pin cushion, and directions and she spent about 10 minutes trying to decide what she wanted to make.

I knew this was going no where fast.  She's like me...likes the thought of sewing but lacks in the excecution department.

Plus, she wanted to make a video of herself while working on her project.

She spent a lot of time videoing the parts to the sewing kit and about 5 minutes actually putting needle and thread to felt before she quickly bored of the whole project.  She then downloaded a video editing app to her iPod and had more fun playing with that than she did sewing. 

On Saturday morning, we slept in, had lunch with my brother and then headed to the mall for some shopping.  We were looking for a dress to wear to the Father/Daughter dance in November.

We stopped into a few stores but were were highly disappointed.  Sarah had never been into Justice so I thought we would check them out. 

Oh.  My.

Even Sarah was disgusted by the amount of sequins, glitter, fur, and neon on all the clothing in that store.  The only thing she was remotely interested in from that store was a sequin covered journal. 

She wants a Bedazzler for Christmas and any item looks like it has been Bedazzled catches her attention.  Luckily, the clothes were too tacky even for her 9-year-old sensibilities and we got the heck out of that store as quickly as we could.

We finally made it to the little girls dress section in Belk, selected 10 dresses and hit the dressing room.  Her absolute favorite was this little number and she tried it on first:

As much as she LOVED this dress is as much as I HATED this dress.

Honestly, I think Sarah was attracted to the belt and the built-in necklace.  I told her that if she wore that she would look like a 40-year-old business woman going out to dinner after a long day of meetings instead of a 9-year-old at a Daddy/Daughter dance.

She totally disagreed with me and hated something about ever other dress she tried on.  I had to put my foot down about this dress though because I could not stop thinking about Julia Roberts and Pretty Woman and there was no way my baby was wearing this dress to a dance with her daddy.

But the other dresses we tried on were too babyish.  And then there were some that just weren't flattering.  Adn then there were others that were too plain (although I told her we could go to Charming Charlies and get a necklace, especially since I honestly believe the only thing about his dress that she really loved was the necklace). Nothing quite fit the bill.

We headed to a few other stores, stopped at the Great American Cookie and even went to Kohls.  No luck.  I suggested a quick trip to Target but my sweet little shopper was worn out. 

So we headed home with no dress.  We did purchase some Amber Blush Body Mist from Bath and Body Works so at least we didn't go home empty handed.

Even though we didn't find a dress, Sarah's excited because no purchase equals another shopping trip to the mall with mommy.  Hopefully by the time we head back, Belk will have another batch of dresses on the racks and we will be able to find just the right one.

Until then, I am going to work hard at keeping my girl looking like a school girl and not a working girl, if you know what I mean...