A slew of baby disco pictures

We went to the "Baby Loves Disco" party this afternoon and had a good time. Ava wasn't as enthused about dancing among the masses as we thought she would be (it was a little overwhelming), but she still enjoyed herself.

Her favorite activity (only barely beating out playing with balloons) was going up and down the couple sets of stairs between levels. At one point during her stair stepping escapades, she got out of Jody's view. He chased after her, but got stuck behind some slow-moving toddlers and parents and she disappeared around a corner. Neither of us could find her for about three minutes. That might not seem like a long time, but that's the first time she's ever been "lost" like that and those three minutes felt like an eternity. What a scary feeling! I was glad she was wearing that bright green dress (which was my sister's when she was little), because I was able to spot her without too much trouble on the dance floor. She was unharmed and had even managed to find a ball to play with in those three minutes. It took me a minute to recover from losing her - my eyes welled up with tears as I hugged her tightly afterwards. That was more than enough excitement for me.

We took several pictures (there are even some with me in them if you can believe it! I asked Jody to take the camera and have at it). I tried to do several without the flash and the ISO bumped way up, but, as dark as it was, there was no way I could get a fast enough shutter speed to avoid motion blur. So I had to settle for using my flash. My new outlook on using my flash is - better to preserve the memory and use the flash (and settle for the unnatural lighting, horrible shadows and dots in eyes, red eyes, etc.), than not to use the flash and have a picture that sucks.

Without further ado, here are more disco pictures than you could ever want. ;) (Click on them to see them larger.)

The dance party as seen from the balcony (the only pic I'm posting where I didn't use the flash):

Dancing with daddy:

On the dancefloor, taking it all in:

Starting to get into it:

Looking out over the balcony:

Climbing on the chairs in the balcony:

Doing a little dancing:

Cheesing it up with mommy. (Jody says I look manic in this pic...nice.):

Watching all the dancers:

Being escorted down the stairs by daddy:

Oooh, a balloon:

Watching daddy get another balloon:

So pretty:

Oooh, and there it goes!: