Arissa saw an ad in San Diego Family magazine for auditions for an American Girl Fashion Show for girls sizes 6 & 10 and begged me to let her do it. Since M&M are size 6s, I decided I'd try to sign them all up.
Note: I don't want my kids to be in anything like a "beauty pageant". Life is hard enough to get through with some self-esteem left in tact, I would never sign them up for anything where they would judged "good enough" or "not quite".
But first off, this fashion show is for charity.... to benefit the UCSD Medical Center Infant Special Care Unit. Also, these auditions were not based on who was "prettiest". The American Girl company sent the charity 50 dresses which the charity was not allowed to alter in any way, so they just have to find girls who will fit the clothes that they make and label as size 10 and size 6.
I called and the woman said they had filled up the auditions already.
Then she called me back and said she had three spots left.
Miracle #1. So I signed the girls up.
Saturday morning we googled the directions and drove up the 15 freeway and arrived thirty minutes early. I was so proud of us making such good time. We sat in the car for about 15 minutes since we were so early, but eventually I started thinking things weren't right because there were only 2 other cars in the parking lot, and no other girls seemed to be showing up....so we went inside to make sure we were at the right place.
Of course, we weren't. We needed to be at their other location, off the 5 freeway, in exactly 11 minutes. The receptionist told us we could probably make it there in 20.
So off we went, hurrying and praying.
We missed the freeway exit because the receptionist had only given us part of the name. I took the next exit and went north, which happened to be in La Jolla near where I used to work. I have no sense of direction and I get lost frequently in Lemon Grove but I took a side street that I thought I remembered heading towards a metro area, in hopes it might be somewhere near where we were headed. It was. Miracle #2.
We found the street we needed. But it stopped halfway in a dead-end because of construction.
We found a detour. After about a mile there were no more detour signs but we drove another 6 miles before we decided we were headed in the complete wrong direction. We turned back around, Jesse suggested we try a random street that he thought went in the direction we wanted to go.
It took us right to it. Miracle #3.
I told the girls that I was sure it was a lost cause, but we might as well just walk in and let them tell us for certain that we were too late.
The suite numbers weren't marked so we ran around the building a good 3 times before we found the right one.
BUT once we got in, they let us check in (as if we weren't 38 minutes late), the girls went RIGHT in for their auditions and we walked right out. Miracle #4.
Miracle #5: All THREE of the girls made it. :)
I waited a whole week to tell them (it was killing me) because I wanted to build the anticipation and make it fun.
I printed out cards with the girls' faces transposed onto the specific American Girl doll that they most resembled, and decorated 'em a bit (w/ American Girl paper and stickers, of course):
I made a special addition as I set the table for dinner, to give them a clue of what my announcement was going to be about:
.....and then after lots of build-up, I handed out the cards and announced (Oprah-style...like when she's giving away cars) that:
ARISSA's gonna be an American Girl model....
MARIAH's gonna be an American Girl model.....
and MALLORY's gonna be an American Girl model!!!
It was SO much fun! I love suprises (when I'm not on the receiving end) and the "big reveal" and watching the girls so happy they can't even stand it:
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