Go West Young Man!

Let me preface this by saying that the Brad Paisley concert was completely awesome! That said, I can continue to tell you about it. As you can see from the pictures, it was quite a show. I’ve never seen lights like those outside of Disney World! I started out the festivities by holding a BBQ of hot dogs at my house. Amber and her friend came over, and Matt and his friend, and even some non-concert attendees were there. So I grilled hot dogs, and they weren’t really burned, they were just deliciously browned. Hey! It’s the first time I ever grilled anything! I’m glad I didn’t blacken them! Then after that, I cleaned up and grabbed the tickets and my cowboy hat and we were out the door, heading off to Target so that Dan could buy a cowboy hat, and we were listening to a mix of the best Brad Paisley songs that Matt burned to a CD. And we were blasting it, by the way. And singing along with it. I think we got some crazy looks, but hey, how often do you get to go to a country concert?

So we finally arrive at the First Midwest Bank Amphitheater, (after taking a wrong turn and ending up in an area where we stuck out like sore thumbs), and we got to park in the VIP lot, and then we got in line to wait for the gates to open. Dan and I stayed with everyone else until about 15 minutes to opening time, and then we left to go into the VIP line. Almost everybody was dressed up with a bit of a country flair, except for the little Naperville high-schoolers in their Abercrombie and Fitch and American Eagle clothes, with sunglasses bigger that fly’s eyes on the girls, and they were all in couples, wrapped around each other and being all smoochy in line. Tsk tsk, if their parents could see them…

And then it was concert time. Dan and I found our little box; it was pretty close to the stage, and right in front of the sound and lighting booth. This was the biggest concert I had ever been to. First up on the docket was Kellie Pickler, and after her, Jack Ingram, and then Taylor Swift. The crowd went wild for her, and the sad part is, she said “when I was in high school…” Shoot! She should still be in high school! Oh well, some people strike it while they’re young, I guess. Then, the moment I’d been waiting for! It was time for Brad Paisley! You know, I tried to win tickets to this concert back in May while we were camping. There was a sweepstakes with Hersheys, and we made s’mores while we were camping and got a game code, and I tried to win tickets with that, but we couldn’t get it to work. And now look, I got tickets anyway!

Brad Paisley was great. He sang a lot of new songs off his new CD, but also a lot of the oldies but goodies. Let’s see, he sang Online, Ticks, the Fishin’ song (one of my favorites), Celebrity, Mr. Policeman, Whiskey Lullaby with a recorded video of Alison Kraus singing along, Mud on the Tires, and many more. I had a blast. My one wish is that we could go back and see it again. I suppose I’ll have to wait until next time though… Maybe next time, I’ll have a pair of cowboy boots to wear along with my hat. I bet some of you didn’t know that I wouldn’t mind living out in the big west where I could ride a horse over my land with nothing but the open space around me, did you? Yeah, I discovered that when we went to South Dakota last year. Ever since then I’ve been becoming more and more countrified, (although I was a bit before too) and now I’m just waiting for that handsome cowboy to mosey into my life ☺

Lizzie’s Favorites of the Post:
Lizzie’s Favorite Music: 5th Gear, the new CD out from Brad Paisley (now why could that be?)
Lizzie’s Favorite Movie: Definitely NOT High School Musical 2 (or one for that matter). I was feeling a bit ill last week and I laid on the floor in the living room while the boys were watching it, and I think I got sicker after that. Barf!!!
Lizzie’s Favorite Book: Reclaiming Nick by Susan May Warren. Excellent read!
Lizzie’s Favorite Hobby: riding my little Blue Streak through cornfield-lined roads.

Adios Amigos!

VIP Tickets!!!

Guess what?!?!? I got two VIP tickets to the Brad Paisley concert on August 26th! I'm so excited! I also can't wait to tell my brother, but he's still in Osaka, so I can't until tomorrow. Dad forwarded an e-mail to me last week about some VIP tickets from his work, and he wanted to know if I was interested. YES!!! I replied. So today after work, my family met up at a deli for dinner, and I see this long white envelope sticking up out of my dad's shirt pocket, and I saw "Brad Paisley" written on the front in black pen. Oh boy! Tickets! Plus, it was hilarious, because today at lunch Amber and I found out that we could go to the Jiffy Lube right down the street from Tyndale and US 99 was giving away tickets every three minutes. As it should turn out, Amber got four free tickets, and Priya got free tickets, and someone else from Tyndae got free tickets! Wow. So I am of a very tickety mindset today, but that's okay. It'll be really fun to go to my first country concert. Yee-haw! I'm gonna have a knee-slappin' good time, and I'm gonna drink 'sweate teay'. Mmmm, I can't wait...

This weekend I went on my fly/roadtrip with Elaine. I flew out on Saturday, and I'm sure most of my readers have heard the story, but I missed my connecting flight to Theif River Falls. But God worked things out and I got a flight to Grand Forks instead, the same city where Elaine and her roommate were at school in. So it worked out. Then we got in the car and started driving. It was a blast. I got to see Elaine again after two months of her living in North Dakota, and I got to know her roommate too, which was very nice. Now, where can we go for our next roadtrip? Oh! I know, Kansas!

Lizzie's Favorites:
Lizzie's Favorite Music: I have to say it; Brad Paisley.
Lizzie's Favorite Book: Still "An Echo in the Darkness"
Lizzie's Favorite Hobby: Seeing the great lands on America.
Lizzie's Favorite Movie: Pride and Prejudice, and I liked Hairspray too.

'Cat Sick'

For those of you wondering what on earth I’m talking about with my title of “cat sick,” yes, I’m weird. Actually, (although this doesn’t excuse me from being weird) I picked up the phrase in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince a couple of weeks ago when I was reading it in preparation for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I got to a paragraph that mentioned that Draco Malfoy had looked like he had just stepped in ‘cat sick’. I couldn’t help myself. I just started laughing! The idea of calling cat barf ‘cat sick’ just tickled my brain. So now I call cat barf cat sick. I know it’s a lovely subject to name my blog about, but in the past couple of days, I’ve been able to use the words ‘cat sick’ quite a lot, so it’s on my mind. Yesterday, Amber was updating a cover file for one of our One Year books, and on the back cover, there’s a drawing of a cat laughing on it’s back with what is supposed to be peanut butter next to it on the floor. You’re not fooling me though—peanut butter? Yeah, right. That’s cat sick! (You can tell by looking at the front cover illustration that it is peanut butter, but on the back cover, when the cat is isolated by himself, it’s definitely cat sick. No doubt about it. I hope you enjoyed that little tangent. As you can probably tell from my picture on this post, it's a day of randomness.

This week is VBS at church, and guess what? I actually get to help! They decided to have it in the evening this year for various reasons, and so, I can help! I just go home from work, inhale some dinner, and fly to church to help out in my special area—crafts. Sadly, I haven’t been able to “fly to church” on my excellent motorbike, thanks to our good friends Rain. Grrr.

My brother is in the Philippines right now. He left on Saturday morning and flew for a really long time to get to Hong Kong. And then from there he went on to Manilla. I hope he’s having a good time, and being stretched a lot too. I know he’ll come back with a gazillion stories to tell, but for now we have to be content to wait for him to come back to tell us those stories. And I’m flying out to Thief River Falls this Saturday! I’m going to have a great little road trip with Elaine and her roommate back here to the good ole’ hometown. So be looking for a post about that when I get back. It’s going to be a blast!

Saturday I also went on a motorcycle ride with my parents and their CMA (Christain Motorcycle Association) group. It was fun. I rode in a formation of one of those giant (but not too giant) groups of motorcycles that you see sometimes on the road, and we went about a hundred miles. We ended the ride at a little ice cream place in Aurora, and they gave out free slushies with every order. I got a medium chocolate cone, and it was about eight inches tall! And then I ordered a basket of fried okra. Mmm, mmm, good! I love fried okra. I want some now…

Lizzie’s Favorites of the Post:
Lizzie’s Favorite Music: Redemption Songs by Jars of Clay. They have I’ll fly away on that CD!
Lizzie’s Favorite Movie: The Bourne Ultimatum, Sahara, and parts of How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. Mostly, the parts I liked the best were the parts with the motorcycle in them. There were some unnecessary parts in there though…
Lizzie’s Favorite Book: An Echo In the Darkness by Francine Rivers.
Lizzie’s Favorite Hobby: Sewing! What a surprise! (and motorcycle riding!)

A Faire Day

Hear ye, hear ye! This last weekend I went to the Bristol Renaissance Faire. I must say, it was most delightful. My second year there, and still so mush to see—jousting matches, falconry, girls who think they’re historically accurate wearing chain mail bras (aren’t they aware that bras weren’t invented until the early 1900s?), glass-blowers and sculptors, etc, etc. I dressed up in my peasant’s outfit again, with a few revisions. I didn’t wear my peasant’s shoes though. They were very dusty and grimy, and not the most comfortable, so I wore flip-flops. I know that looked very historically accurate, complete with Legally-Blond-pink toenails. But it was way more comfortable for me.

We car-pooled up there, and in the morning, it looked ominous because of the heavy gray clouds hanging in the sky. Thankfully, it cleared up, and was sunny and bright for the majority of the day. I had a great time looking into all the little shops and seeing the artisans at work, and being there with my friends. I think the coolest things that I saw were the falconry falcons with their hoods on, the acrobats with knives and fire, the glass-sculptor, and the delicious strawberry ice cream in a waffle cone that I had right when I felt in desperate need of it. I liked that nobody looked at me like I was weird in my Medieval get-up either. Some of the costumes they had there were exquisite (not the chain-mail bras though). I was inspired to sew another costume. We’ll see how that turns out. For lunch I partied up with Joanna and Aubrie and we got a plate full of fried vegetables! Mmmmmmmm, greasy goodness. There were fried broccoli, zucchini, potatoes, onions and carrots. And we each got a turkey leg. See? We were covered; we had our meat and vegetables!

After a full day of fun-ness, the Faire closed, and we were forced to leave. We had dinner at an Oasis over the highway, and I was disappointed to see that Subway had no Dr. Pepper, and their Sprite (which isn’t my favorite anyway) was yellowy. So I made a new discovery—raspberry iced tea (sweetened) mixed with a third of lemonade is really very good. You can hardly taste the tea at all! So I have a new delicious drink in my mental menu.

My readers might remember that I had a goldfish at work named Jangles. He was the killer of a few of his tankmates, but I could never actually get rid of him, though I threatened it. Well, a couple of days ago, Dan’s giant guorami died, and his 20-gallon tank was empty. So, I took Jangle home to give him more swimming space (he was getting too big for the 2-gallon tank at my office). He likes it very much. Anyway, I needed new fish for my 2-gallon, so I went to PetCo at lunch on Monday, and I got four new little fish. They are black neon tetras, and I named them very appropriately: Kawasaki, Suzuki, Harley, and Honda. I think the need a fifth friend to be completely happy, and I shall name him Ducati (the rich man’s motorcycle) and of course, I need an algae eater; Vespa (the scooter).

And now for Lizzie’s Favorites of the Post:
Lizzie’s Favorite Music: the Daughtry CD, and Alison Kraus’s Lonely Runs Both Ways.
Lizzie’s Favorite Movie: the Importance of Being Earnest, even though I haven’t seen it in awhile.
Lizzie’s Favorite Book: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
Lizzie’s Favorite Hobby: Riding my motorcycle!

Hasta la vista. . .