Saturday, November 17, 2007

Blue Man - the Girl's Night Out! WARNING - TONS of pictures!!!!

First, let me say that we ingested not one single drop of alcohol tonight! No matter what these pictures may look like... we were not intoxicated. Some of us are just naturally retarded! :) (Not saying who!)

L-R: Audrey, Cameren, Jeanine, Paige.

A few girls from work and I decided it would be, could be, should be fun to go to the Blue Man Group concert. They were scheduled to come to Gwinnett and we wanted a night on the town... away from work! I think the last time I did something like I was still on night shift and much, much younger! 10 years younger. Anyway, I digress.
Let's see... only a few girls would actually commit to going. If only they had known what they would be missing. The first picture is at dinner. We went to Mo Mo Ya's... or is that Yo Yo Ma's? Either way, we ate there. Japanese Hibachi and Sushi. Paige is the sushi expert so I sat next to her so I could glean from her wisdom! She IS my hero (just in case she reads this)!! We ingested lots of food. But we did NOT enjoy our little sad hibachi chef. I think his puppy must have died that day or something. He poured out the food, slapped his spatula a few times and lit the volcano. That was it. No interaction, no jokes, not even good meat. At least that's what Carmen and Audrey said.
Oh, on a side note. Notice the happy young couple behind me? They were on a date. After they left I told Paige how happy I was to be out of the dating scene.

It was an odd thing to watch and listen to. I can't even explain it, but they just didn't seem happy to be there together. Maybe they were related to the hibachi chef and his dog. Or maybe they just realized they had missed the BMG tickets and couldn't go to the concert with us.
Ok, this is Karen and her husband. She works with us too but ended up taking a small slew of her family instead of hanging with us. They were privileged to sit directly behind us. She only thought she wasn't going to hang with us!!


We arrived way early because dinner was so quick. You know, we even spent a long time just hanging out at the table. We thought about going for dessert but thought that might be fun to do after the show. If only we had known what the night was going to hold for us.
The 5 of us went in. I pretended to be the "DD" because they were giving away free soda (said with a thick mid-western accent). We proceeded to find our seats on the floor.

I thought we had pretty good seats, but the usherette said we had great seats and took us within mere feet of the stage. Woo Wee! We ended up on row 9. It was pretty awesome. As the seats filled the scrolling marquee began to entertain us. If you've ever experienced BMG then you know they communicate very deep thoughts via a scrolling marquee. There were two young boys behind us who read every single word out loud. We didn't have to try to watch the words fly by because they narrated the entire thing. I enjoyed hearing the excitement in their voices. Then we started playing the text messaging game with Paige's phone. We wanted that backstage pass!! :)
We didn't win.
This year the opening act was a wee bit, um... odd and boring, yet intriguing. Phil Yern or Dave Kirn or something I just can't remember. He was certainly a computer geek. He mixed and scratched music and video. Some of it was funny, but mostly we just wanted BMG to come out. He needed to do his 1 or 2 songs and sit down. 30 minutes later......... we finally heard the sweet sounds of rhythm. :)

(This is how they opened!)


Initially they play this tubulum. Until they put both pieces together and play as one... it's a simple single sound. Once they figure out how to combine the two, the whole band comes alive and joins in.











This is the drum set that was right in front of us. I didn't turn my flash on so it wouldn't light up the backs of the heads in front of me... and thus, the shutter stayed open longer. This way, if you can get past the blurriness, you can see the movement of their hands/sticks and their faces. You can also see the liquid that spews from the drums at times. I do believe it's water with colored lights under them but in the NYC show it certainly looked and acted like paint. We were not in the "poncho" section, but we were close. :)
This is my favorite drum. The HUGE bass drum that reverberates through your entire being when it's drummed.
This is one if the whips. It makes a cool sound. One of the people in Karen's family said it was the scratch dude making the sound on his machine. I'm not convinced of that.
Another part of the act was the catching of marshmallows. They switched it up a bit this year and put the "sculpture" on a baseball cap on top of an audience member's head. The paint ball art was done on a T-shirt on another audience member instead of the canvas of the old days. They were certainly lucky people to get such fine artwork! :)
They did a skit with the lead guitarist which doesn't translate into words or pictures. All I have is the end result.

These next pictures of just various ones throughout the show where they were wearing lighted suits. Again, super cool!






Here's the end with the backpacks that shot out all the paper. I think Karen and Michael enjoyed wrapping it around Jeanine. The crazy intoxicated person in front of us looked suspiciously like a mummy when it was over. Then she ran like a chicken to the bathroom when it was over. I think she didn't need anything (like paper) to slow her from the destination.
Can you tell Cameren is thrilled to be riding in my van??!?! What's so funny here is that Karen and her family are also with us. Turns out her battery on her car was dead and wouldn't even run after being jumped off. So, they crammed into the back seat and I took them back to Cleveland. We listed to hip-hop really loudly and showed off some of our newly learned Rock Concert Movements.
I'm pretty sure everyone was impressed with how talented we all are!! Some of the moves I threw down were The Basic Head Nod, The One Armed Fist Pump, The Tribute to Flippie, The Up and Down Jump, Raise the Roof, and a few others I'd be happy to demonstrate! The thing is I think Dave Eyrich and Paul Smith have influenced me more than I remember... from my teen years. Their philosophy was, These people don't know me and they'll never see me again. I can be crazy without fear of feeling foolish.
I had fun!
I hope BMG comes back next fall again. If not, I think I'm going to have to organize a trip to Vegas or NYC to see them. Don't you want to join me?! :)

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

More Pictures...

Here are some pictures from this week. Bennett and Maggie's costumes for the kid's musical at church. Ruth and Lydia wanted their pictures made too.





Here's the group shot from this afternoon. I needed one to send to South Africa. Bennett was trying to help out by tickling the girls. He tickled Maggie first, said "now hold that smile" and then tried to tickle Lydia.

That's Kit Kat in the background. He's afraid he might miss out on something... like the pretzel crumbs from the girl's bags!

Tooth Day... Lydia's 1st trip to the dentist.

Everyone says I'm crazy for taking all 4 kids to the dentist by myself. It went fine. The only thing was I didn't get the pictures of xray time because I was helping Ruth or Lydia hold still in their chair. Maggie's such a trooper. She always wants to go first. And I didn't get any pictures of her in the chair this time because I was holding Ruth's hands. I did get an "after" picture.

Bennett did better this time than any other visit. He did everything they said without the first grunt or complaint. They even did xrays which he's not fond of.



Of course, I guess he could have been complaining and I didn't hear him because Ruth was fussing in my ear. She didn't want to sit still or open initially, but eventually warmed up and did fine.
Here's a shot of the girls looking at the pictures of their teeth. Ruth finally got her x-rays. She's been saying that after she turned 4 she wouldn't be scared anymore and they could take her pictures. I missed it, but it was probably for the best. They can't complain if I don't listen! :)

Lydia surprised me by sitting just right and opening wide. First things first... Lydia had to check out her goodie bag! I think she liked her timer a whole bunch. It was a great distraction initially. :)
The hygentist (?) was able to do all she needed without any trouble until she started the whirring, spinning thing that tickles the teeth and gums. I don't think Lydia would call it tickling though. After that she was done. Done opening. Done sitting. Until the word "sticker" came up. Then she suddenly was ready to do whatever! It's a funny thing about those little bribes. :)

All is well. No cavities x 4... and Maggie came away with one less tooth. The dentist pulled her front tooth which was barely hanging in the wind... and she used her numbing cream to make it better. I called it cheating! :) Gotta call the Tooth Fairy again!
Here's a pre-dentist smile from Lydia. Peanut Butter toast and all!

Friday, October 12, 2007

Bennett's Dance Party

Bennett had a dance party for his 7th birthday. He has wanted one since we went to cousin Heather's wedding back in June. It has been a consistant request so I really wanted to make it happen. The kids don't get big parties around here to begin with and I've been trying to get birthdays to be a big deal every year. I don't want big parties... just special days for the kids. Ruth and Bennett have shared their birthdays in the past. Most years it's just the nearby family who end up eating cake with us. That's certainly sufficient... but I wanted to dance! Actually, I wanted to see Grammy dance again too. She was showing off at the wedding and we enjoyed the entertainment. The kids love to dance. They have very little inhibition and don't care at all what we say about them... at least for a little while longer. Bennett is generally reserved and very aware of people watching him. He doesn't show off... unless he's on the dance floor! ;) He has this robot dance that he came up with last year in kindergarten and it was a big deal when he showed his teacher "the dance". He's keeping up with the steps because he has already shown his 1st grade teacher his moves. If only I had it on video! I think I could add it.
Initially, I was going to have a big shin-dig in a place away from home, invite tons of friends and family, and party the night away. But it turned out that I just can't plan and make things happen like that. All the great ideas in my head just can't get to reality. I think it's a disease! Plus, I asked Bennett multiple times who all he wanted to come dance and he never did come to any great conclusions other than his entire class (which wasn't happening!). We opted for a much smaller, at home shin-dig. Would that be an ankle-scoop?



He had a couple of boys from his class that got to come as well as cousin Micah. If was a Friday night home football game so the parents went on to that while we danced and ate pizza. It was actually a great time. I enjoyed having just the kids and no adults! We hung up a black light and covered the windows. It was quite fun and the adults seemed to enjoy the glowing just as much as the kids. We borrowed a dance mat that plugs into the TV and watched them attempt to follow along. It's very difficult... for me. They had a great time being completely goofy. We downloaded a bunch of dance-party songs and did the YMCA, Electric Slide, Cha-Cha Slide, Chicken Dance, Hip-hop, and head banging. Actually, Maggie and Curtis did the head banging while I did all the sliding and hopping. We sent the boys home with their very own copy of DJ C's dance mix and a microphone that transmits over the radio. Very cool!
Oh yes, the boys all went home with real "White County" teeth too. My favorite picture is the one of Micah... because the way he poses it actually looks real. And his eyes match... those silly little eyes. His Daddy stayed for the party too. I forgot to mention that. He was supposed to go get some work accomplished while Micah was playing but he was too excited about the black light! He sang a great rendition of Happy Birthday on the radio (with the microphone). What a great Uncle!

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