A Black Tie Event!

Here is my second post for today! John received an award for a fuel cell that was commercialized this year that he has patents on and so we got to go to North Carolina for the award ceremony! There was also a conference that he went to so he and I went for the whole week! John's mom and sister came and watched the kids and we all had a great time! The ceremony was black tie so John rented a tux and I had fun finding a dress, shoes, purse, and jewelry--it was like prom! :) I also got a pedicure that week and had my hair done, which I have never done before so that was fun. I found an outlet mall and entertained myself all day by shopping for the kids' summer clothes, the mall was huge with lots of different stores that I'd never heard of so I had a lot of fun! The weather was crazy while we were there, they had severe weather and it rained a ton, they were in a drought but this storm made up their water deficit in 2 hours--there was also a tornado warning one day and a funnel cloud the next, so that was pretty exciting! Our car broke too ( we drove) so we had to get that fixed but it was done in one day so we felt very blessed. My cousin that I haven't seen in 15 years lived close by so we met her and her husband and had dinner at a Cajun Cafe---we ate Alligator Tail! No kidding! John said it tasted like green scaly chicken! I thought it just tasted like chicken! :) Her husband works for a NASCAR driver so that was fun talking to him about that, everything out there is Nascar! The award ceremony was neat, they had pictures and a reception before hand and then the actual ceremony where they tell all of the details of what people were getting awards for, it was for the transfer of technology, where government departments get research commercialized and out on the market, which they like to do! There were lots of gov't deptartments there, the ones I remember are the departments of Energy (John's area), transportaion, defense, agriculture, NASA, health, and lots of others. The meal was good and there was tons of silverware on the table, we had a fork for everything! :) We had a really nice time and it was fun! I loved having a week off of normal life and John and I got a date every evening, we found several good restaurants! We had some seafood, brazilian BBQ and Southern BBQ, and the cajun, it was all delicious! The drive there was beautiful, everything was very green and there were tons of wildflowers growing all over. The kids were glad we came back but no one thinks they really missed us, they played with cousins all week and had Grandma taking care of them, life can't get better than that can it?! We did get lots of hugs and kisses though when we returned! So, after the Ball, the carriage has dropped the Prince and Princess off back at the castle and life happily ever after continues on!