Our Calendar Girl

If you have never gone through the process of helping get a 14-year-old young lady ready for her first calendar girl contest, I highly recommend it. This was my granddaughter's first contest like this, and I was thrilled to be able to go with my daughter and my first grandchild on this wonderful adventure.

This was literally an all-day event, so I'll keep it brief and hit the highlights of the day. First, we were off to get the pedicure/manicure. My daughter and I sat in the WONDERFUL massage chairs while the "beauty" got beautified. Oh, my, I didn't want to get up. What an incredible invention those chairs are! Then, it was on to getting the hair done. Cala decided to wear her hair simple and just let it hang long. That was a good choice.

Okay, so then it was on to get the "perfect" necklace and earrings for the gorgeous dress she was going to wear. Aren't malls just marvelous? That day, we didn't get to do too much dilly-dallying around. My daughter is a speed walker, and she was on a mission! Found just the set she was looking for in the second store.

Now, the only thing remaining was makeup. We went to one of those Mac beauty counters and had a great makeup artist accentuate Cala's beautiful face. We didn't want to overdo it, though, because she has such natural beauty. He did a great job.

So, now we were finished with the main work, we headed back to the house to get her dressed. I have only included a few of the pictures here to give you an idea of the final results. By the way, she didn't wear the fuzzy shoes in the contest, but those ARE her favs!

It was a great night with some beautiful girls. There were 26 contestants in this very first calendar contest for a brand new school. They were all so excited and nervous. The first part of the contest was the modeling and in the second section they all had to answer the same question. One girl was picked for the cover, and 12 others were chosen for the months of the year.

Unfortunately, Cala didn't win ... at least not that contest. But we were SOOOOO proud of her. What impressed me the most was her attitude. At the end of the night, there was some of the usual back-and-forth conversations about all the other contestants - you know how people can talk. Someone asked Cala what she thought about one of the girls. Her reply was that she wasn't going to talk about the others. She thought they were all great. And the ones that won were really pretty. She went on to talk about all the positive things of the other girls, and not once did she cut any of them down. I was sitting behind her at the time and had to reach up, put my hand on her shoulder and tell her how proud I was of her attitude.

My daughter and son-in-law are doing an incredible job raising three children in this crazy, mixed-up world of ours today. It is awesome watching my grandchildren grow into loving, intelligent, responsible young adults.

So, here are a few of my shots from that day. Hope you enjoy!