My Imagine Dragons Meet and Greet Birthday

We listen to one band in this house more than any other.  It was the second concert J and I went to together.  The first after he got his real job.  They have some connection to our hometown and our kids love them.  I mean like seriously love them.  They play so much that even J knows most of their songs.  They are not playing in our hometown on their latest tour but they were playing in our parents hometown.  I noticed they were playing in around my birthday but when I finally decided that maybe we could go there were not tickets left, except on stub hub.  I hate stub hub.  With a passion.  I hate them so much.  Then I happened to notice that they had a few meet and greet tickets left.  They were super pricey but they came with a pre-party, signed posters, a meet and greet and first sections seats.  I asked J if that was a crazy thing to ask for for a birthday.  He said yes.  Then he said, "let's do it."  So for my 37th birthday we went to see Imagine Dragons Evolve in Utah with meet and greet passes.  It was AMAZING!  Probably the best concert I've ever been too.  J agrees.  It was at an amphitheater and freezing...think mid october in Utah but the sound was SO GOOD!

These first pics are all from the pre party.  I'm going to be honest pre parties are a little silly.  It was just this tent with some candy and chips and drinks.  If were were alcohol drinkers I think pre parties would be more fun but we aren't so basically your just waiting in a tent.  They did have some super cool stage stuff for you to check out.  

There was this awesome poster.  Everyone took a picture in front of it.  The nice thing was since there was a line you could just ask people to trade taking pictures with you.  

Here was some cool guitars and these awesome gloves from the Believer music video.  They were signed by Dolph Lundgren which J just thought was awesome because he loves the Rocky movies.

They had some drums from the Smoke and Mirror tour.  There was this huge one with the mallets there.  Everyone was just taking pictures with it and then some guy in a crazy tie dyed shirt walked up and picked up the mallets and hit it really hard and we all looked around like, great now they are going to kick us out :)

These crazy costumes are from the Thunder music video.

So after like 20 minutes in the tent we left to buy some t-shirts for the kids.  Then we came back and got into a big line so that we could do our meet and greet picture.  So weirdly enough the girl standing with her hand on her face, that girl has been to see them 31 times.  She is like a super fan.  She's also done tons of meet and greets.  I wish I would have gotten a picture of the girl with her head turned.  She had made full out armor with the theme of the latest cd on it.  It was pretty awesome.  It was while I was standing in this line that I started to feel super sick.  My tummy hurt a ton and I thought I was going to have diarrhea.  So talk about awkward.  So that is the feeling I had going into this. 

These meet and greets are so fast.  You put your stuff down.  Shake all the hands...well that is what we did, good grief we are so Mormon.  Tell them how much your kids love them.  Stand in the middle.  Smile for a picture.  Then you are done.  It was crazy fast but cool.  Would I spend the money to do it again.  Probably not, unless I had the kids because I know it was this meet and greet that made me so sick feeling.  As soon as we left I felt my stomach un-clench and by show time I was fine.  The best part of the meet and greet tickets was this below, check out our seats.  Had we picked the pit GA we could have been right by the stage because they let the meet and greet people in first but I'm an old lady so we picked seats and they were nice and close.  What a great venue!  J even let me take a bunch of selfies with him, which he totally hates.  I mean just does not like, but he was in a good mood and so he was more selfie agreeable then normal.  

Here was one of the opening acts.  They had two.  K-Flay as well but this one was definitely the more amusing of the two.  The Group Love girl was in a full body cat suit and she was just shimming like there was not tomorrow.  It was awesome!

Some October Picture Catch Up

When I was in elementary school everyone used to tell me I had a witch's nose.  Come to think of it that continued into middle school and also high school.  Sometimes you just have to embrace who you are.

How does this kid not fall out of the bed.  Shesh.  It is a balancing act every evening.  

This guy loves hats but only when he is the one putting them on.  Also who doesn't love Target.  

Well at least it isn't a tooth brush.  He has pretty much put every tooth brush in this house in his mouth.

This little guy walking at church in his church clothes is pretty much the highlight of my Sundays.

Aunt Jo and Uncle Travis came to visit with baby O.  

The guys got busy cleaning out the barn and taking down a rickety patio cover.

Aunt Jo brought a bunch of clay and origami paper for the girls to play with. 

The girls went a little crazy with the paper and now I have butterflies hanging from my ceiling fans and puppy dogs hanging from my walls.  The butterflies look awesome when the girls turn the fans on.

Moms trying to get a good cousin picture.  It didn't really happen.

O and me hanging out.

We went to Utah and this guy at a rest stop made some rock necklaces for them.  

Kids in a scrum.

If you aren't tall enough to reach things find a "stool".

Twin day at school.  

80's day at school.  This is how my daughters actually dress most of the time so it wasn't much of a stretch.

We got our house painted.  I'm still getting used to it, wish it had a little more grey but it is definitely an improvement.

We took the kids to a LDS temple walk through.  They enjoyed being able to see the inside.  

Olympics Hangover

I have an Olympics hangover.  My brother and I have been binging figure skating like there is no tomorrow.  We arguing via text about who we think is the better skater, yell at eachother not to give spoilers if one of us has had to pause, discuss best costumes and song choices, praise and complain about the commentator, and question couple skaters claimes about platonic relationships.  It has been a real treat but yesterday is all came crashing down.  For those watching the Olympics you know the usual strong Russian team has been brought low.  There were allegations of dopping from the top down from 2012.  Any Russians invited have been under the olympic flag and almost no one from 4 years ago has been allowed to return.  One places where they shine bright though has been woman's figure skating.  There were some other amazing skaters but they were all basically slogging it out for who got third.  Meanwhile the two Russians were amazing.  Up until this year it was obvious who woud win.  Then a 15 year old trained by the same coaches jumped on the sceen and came out ahead in the short program.  It made it impossible for me to watch the Long.  My brother had to text me the results late last night.  At four in the morning I settled in to watch the programs.  The 15 year old won.  Point wise she came out on top, but guys Medvedeva's program was golden.  It was probably one of the best skates I've ever seen.  It combined the physical you expect to see with the emotion and artistry you rarely see outside of ice dancing.  I wish they could have in the very least shared Gold.  As it is Medvedeva had to settle for silver, which is a real shame because she was brilliant.

How not to deliver test results.

I'm going to start this post out by saying Dr. J is fine.  There is nothing wrong with him.  Good, now you won't have to worry about him at all.  Let me tell you, you are the lucky one.

J went to the dermatologist earlier this week.  A few different members in our family have seen him and we get on rather well.  Apparently he wanted to be a med/ped doc before he became a dermatologist.  FYI his wife enjoys dermatology more because of all the free botox and procedures.  Who wouldn't :)  Anyway J has a few little weird moles.  We keep on an eye on them but there was one on his temple that was making him a little nervous.  The dermatologist agreed it looked a little iffy so they took a sample of it and sent it off.  Thursday at like ten the dermatologist gives me a call on the my cell phone.  "Hey," he says, "Is your hubby there?"  I told him that he was sleeping.  This week he did a slew of nights.  "Oh," he says, "well I'm going to give you my cell phone number and when he wakes up can you have him give me a call so we can talk about his lab results."

Now I'm going to interrupt this story right now to remind everyone I run pretty high on the anxiety front.  The second he offers his personal cell phone and ask me to have J call him when he gets up to get his results I start to freak out a little bit.  Why wouldn't he just tell him to call the office when he was off?  Why wouldn't he just email them?  Why wouldn't he just call his phone and leave a message?  I've had to call in plenty of times to get perfectly normal results from the office but no one has ever offered me their personal number.  They leave the office number and say to call in during office hours.  Heck the fact that it was even the doctor that calls has me on high alert.  Usually it is a nurse or an office person who calls.  So I have to sit with this for six hours.  Six hours I'm worried.  Six hours I'm thinking good grief this is such a weird way to deliver news.

Finally I hear the shower pop on upstairs.  I take care of the dog, get the kids settled, grab the number and head upstairs.  "Hey," I say my voice sort of catching in my throat, "the dermatologist called, he wants you to call him about your test results."  At this point J goes, "It's cancer."  Now mind you I haven't even mentioned yet that he left his personal cell phone for J to call.  I start to cry.  J gives me a hug and says, "It's ok.  Don't worry.  It will be fine."  But I'm thinking, "Will it be?"  I have friends and family who have fought cancer and won but I also have friends and family who have died and guys CANCER SUCKS!  It is just the worst.  It steals your loves ones.  It takes their health, their happiness, they lose their vitality and they slowly just disappear from you.  So I'm crying as I tell J that he left his personal cell phone number.  "Well," he says, "I better call."  So he calls and after just some general pleasantries the dermatologist says, "Yeah I just wanted to let you know your labs came back and they are benign.  No cancer."  I started to laugh but I'm not kidding at that moment I wanted to slap the dermatologist.  So there you go.  J doesn't have cancer.  Our dermatologist is still a pretty cool guy but for crying out loud that was a lame way to share that news!