further adventures in parenting and raising aliens

 So Aerin has acquired a dress for the prom and thereby entered territory I have never traversed. She was also introduced to the idea of a strapless bra ("how does that even work???"), tried on high heeled shoes ("waaay easier to balance on than stilts") and been given a chance to marvel over how seriously other people take the whole prom thing ("these people wanted to us to register, so no two people wore the same dress to the prom, and they thought we were cutting awfully close waiting til three weeks before the date to find a dress... how hard am I supposed to worry about this??"). 

Many many thanks to Abby, who kind of liked looking for her own prom dress and kindly escorted Aerin and her raucous crew through town and then down to the Huge Horrible Mall for the rest of the expedition (shoes, a dress for someone else, who knows what all else). Aerin's the only one of the crowd with a driver's license and she isn't allowed to endanger anyone except herself and her sibling until she's had six months behind the wheel, which will happen in mid-June.