I said I wouldn’t believe it until I saw it, but it’s really snowing! We’re lucky to see one day a year here in the Carolinas and today’s the day! It didn’t start until after 10 so the girls didn’t get to see it. I’m hoping it either is still snowing in the morning or there’s enough accumulation that they get to play in it a little bit. I just tried to get pictures but taking a picture of snow in the dark is no small task. Maybe I’ll have some pictures tomorrow of them playing in it!
Archives for January 2008
Busy 24 hours
Well I have a meeting I’m supposed to be at tomorrow at work but Scott is working so I’ve concocted this huge kid-transfer starting this evening through tomorrow evening.
- Tonight I took them to Mom’s and put them to bed over there around 8:30.
- Mom will take them to school tomorrow.
- SIL is picking up my niece and my two and taking them to Scott’s GM.
- MIL will pick all the girls up from there around 2 as she normally does on Wednesday.
- MIL will take them to AWANA tomorrow evening where I’ll pick them up afterwards.
Whew. I told the girls they were going on an adventure tomorrow. Emma was into it. Lexi wasn’t so sure.
Honestly, I had a hard time leaving Mom’s house tonight. I mean I was ready to get home but I stayed in Mom’s room kissing them goodnight a few extra times knowing I wouldn’t see them until tomorrow night. Usually that is cool with me but it seems that is happening so much lately. I think they have more of social schedule than I do. I just miss my little girls 
So my day tomorrow will be quite the adventure also as, as I told Heather, I have to get up in the middle of the night and go to work. lol. My alarm is set at 6:15 and I hope to be out there door right at 7. I have some big 2 hour meeting I’m supposed to go to and then have some meetings in the afternoon as well.
After work, I’ll be headed straight for church and will be there until after 8. It will be a busy day indeed.
Band practice – help indeed
This evening we had our first very organized practice in awhile. The semi new leader G was able to make it last minute and our guitar player and bass player were there. And believe it or not, I kept beat on the drums. Seriously. We sang through three songs we all knew pretty well to prepare for tomorrow night.
Thursday is G’s big meeting with all the band including our lead guitarist who has been absent for awhile and a new lead guitarist who will backfill for him. I’m excited but somehow I see myself getting MORE roped into this than LESS roped into it.
BUT it was actually a lot of fun singing tonight. G played with some harmonies and since he sang so loudly, it let me sing louder and we actually sounded pretty good. Now if we can just pull that off tomorrow.
American Idol 7
Um, I’m not even sure this is even worth space on my blog. AI was disappointing tonight. A couple of funny people (can we all sing “Let me people go” together) and a couple pretty good people (did anyone notice the Carrie Underwood/Kellie Pickler Jr. setup?). That’s about it. Don’t expect much commentary from me going forward unless something better happens or it gets to the finals.
American Idol 7: Here we go
Tonight’s the big night. We start with the American Idol craziness again. I’m not extremely excited but I’ll be watching for sure. This American Idol site listed out the contestants and you get to hear some of them. What I noticed: half these people are already semi-professional. I always liked the fact that American Idol took people like Carrie Underwood from nowhere and made her a superstar. A lot of these people already have records and bands and I don’t know, it just doesn’t seem American Idol-ish. I know people like Blake Lewis were the same in the past but I guess going into knowing some of these people have a head start puts a downer on it.
As for the talent, not all of them had samples of their music but two that stood out to me were Cardin Lee McKinney and Michael Sanfilippo. No clue who they are but when I went on their myspace, I actually wanted to stay and listen and they have a good look and style about them.
Conversation at Chick-o-lay
Chick-o-lay…that’s what Lexi calls Chick-fil-A. We ask her multiple times where we’re going just so she’ll say it. We had a funny conversation at Chick-o-lay today. Scott is one of those people that always has an answer for everything. He always has a quick comeback for anything you say and normally he turns your words around on you just to be funny. Me–not so much–I’ll think of something 10 minutes later, laugh to myself and realize how stupid I would seem if I would try to explain my oh-so-great-but-very-very-late comeback.
Anyway, I thought I had him cornered today but sadly, no. (We were laughing the whole time this happened so please don’t take this for more than it’s worth)
E: Mommy, will you play Chutes and Ladders with me when we get home?
Me: No, honey, I have to work but Daddy will…I bet he’d play five times with you.
Oh, I thought I had him. Emma has a fantastic memory and no way would she let him get out of playing anything less than five times with her.
E: Daddy, will you play five times with me?
Scott: Sure, I’ll play five times with you…(Scott looks at me knowing he has the upper hand) if Mommy’s nice to me tonight.
Me (faking a very surprised and happy voice): Of course I’ll be nice to Daddy, I love Daddy!
[insert family hugs]
Lesson Learned: Play with fire and you will get burned.
Winterjam 2008
Up until about two hours before the concert, I wasn’t going to go last night. I just had so much to do and I was going to be gone for at least 6 hours and I hadn’t seen the girls very much. But then my nephew wanted to go and we figure out a way I could drop the kids off at choir and meet the youth group up there instead of spending time going on the church bus and then riding the light rail up there. And I figured Scott could pick the girls up and spend the last hour or two before bedtime with them since he had been working all weekend.
The place was absolutely packed. Bobcats arena can hold 20K or so I suppose and it was full all the way to the parts where you couldn’t see the stage up at the top. Thankfully two of our youth had gotten there FOUR hours early and had seats saved for us on the floor.
When we walked in I heard Group 1 Crew playing and I was certain they must have been playing their CD while everyone waited. NO! The one group I was intent on seeing went on before 6 when I was told the concert started so we completely missed them. We DID see Mandisa, Skillet, NewSong, BarlowGirl, Connersvine and MercyMe.
Just a short recap of each:
Mandisa – She is every ounce of wonderful she was on American Idol and ten times more. That girl can SANG. Honestly, I wasn’t that impressed with her songs on the radio but hearing some of them live just gave them a whole new meaning. She sings with heart and meaning and it was wonderful.
Skillet – I don’t consider myself a rocker by any means but Skillet was AWESOME. I was jumping, head banging (ok, only for a few seconds) and singing with the rest of them. Yes, I was acting like a teenybopper last night. But they were really good. I’m figuring out rock bands are so much better live than they ever could be recorded. It just doesn’t do it justice.
NewSong – They started out with Little Drummerboy and although the drums at the end were really, really cool I just thought it was weird they played a Christmas song. We stepped out to eat at this point since I saw NewSong twice last year but they are a fabulous group and I love Nate Sallie.
BarlowGirl – Honestly, I’ve never been a huge fan of BarlowGirl and while they are very talented, I wasn’t jumping for joy over them. They were ok. It’s just after you see Skillet, it’s hard to compare the live show.
Connersvine – This is a duo and a guy from The Colts are in this group. He wasn’t there yesterday because they were playing a sort-of important game. Only one of them sang and I’ll just say I’d like to say I’d like to see them singing together before I make any judgment.
MercyMe – OK, honestly I was going to leave during MercyMe. I know, I know they are a fabulous band but they are just so less exciting in person than some of the others and really, haven’t we all heard MercyMe played to death on the radio? But after each song, I’d say, let me just see what they’re playing next and every time, it was a great song I didn’t want to miss. I thought I couldn’t hear I Can Only Imagine one more time but it turned into the best praise song of the night. And the lead singer was totally soaking it in. He sat there with a smile and the microphone out to the audience obviously loving it 20,000 people were singing the words. And I don’t mean to say he was being prideful, he seemed humbled by it. They put on a great show and really, they have had a TON of radio hits that were great to sing along with since we HAVE heard them a hundred times over.
Without further ado, here are some pictures. I stupidly left my dad’s lens at his house Saturday night instead of keeping it so the quality of the pictures are not nearly what they could have been.
Skillet:
MercyMe:
Mandisa:
BarlowGirl:
Julian Drive Concert
The concert turned out great last night. We had about 300 people turn out. There were several that responded at the end, one that I personally got to lead to Christ. A great night indeed.
If you’ve never heard of the band, they sing Hoobastank’s song The Reason so that should give you an idea. Check them out on myspace.
They were all very nice as we ate lunch with them, help them set up (well, many of us watched them set up), perform and then meet and greet with the people afterwards.
