{NKOTB - part 3, the saga continues}

You can get caught up with parts I & II of this nonsense here: (part 1) & (part 2)

So you remember how Courtney & I were so excited about our VIP seats at the Wachovia Center? 

After we took care of business in the bathroom (yes, that includes taking pictures) and got our Diet Cokes from the bar, we made our way to our seats.  Shortly after we were seated, the first opening act took the stage.  We weren't really sure who it was going to be.  We just knew that we'd never heard of her before.  Yeah.  Her name is Lady Gaga & I'm pretty glad that I'd never heard of her before.  For those of you not "in the know", like me...here's her picture:

 

(image source: Starimpulse.com)

Either I'm getting really old, or some music today is just weird.  Maybe both.  Anyway...in between strutting around in her underwear, waving a lit up staff/stick around, playing dead, and gyrating on the floor, she sang a little.  We were not impressed.  The gals sitting around us probably thought we weren't going to be any fun during the whole concert, because for Lady Gaga's performance, we sat there staring with our mouths hanging open.  And when we did speak, it was mostly to talk about how ridiculous her act was.  Moving right along...

Next was Natasha Bedingfield.  She was fun.  She did a good job warming us up for the good stuff.  We enjoyed her fun, upbeat music & her performance.  Although we did sing along to some of her songs, we didn't want to waste any serious vocal chords on anybody but the New Kids.

Speaking of New Kids?  Um - awesome.  Before they came out there was a montage on the big TVs around the stage that showed some of their past history & clips of old performances.  It talked about how it has been so many years since they'd been together.  Then they came out.

Don't laugh at me when I tell you I cried a little bit.  Here & several other times throughout the show.  I said don't laugh.

They put on a great show.  I was pleased to see that much of the show time was spent performing the old stuff.  That's the stuff I wanted to hear.

And they delivered, baby.

Joey-Joe has always been my favorite.

And Courtney has always loved Donnie.

About halfway through the show, they guys showed up on this small circle stage near the back of the floor.  We had a great view of them there.  The stage had a grand piano on it and it spun in a circle.  I think they did 3 or 4 songs here.  They were casually sitting on the piano during some of the talking parts and seriously interacting with the crowd.  Wow.  I bet those girls were very pleasantly surprised when they found themselves so close.

There were several "transition" songs throughout the show, when one guy would take the stage solo while the others changed outfits or something.

Here's Jordan.  With his shirt unbuttoned and a breeze blowing.

I loved how the stage looked for this one.  It is a classic.  Cover Girl.

Some more shots of the show...

And for the encore numbers, they donned cute basketball attire.  It reminded me of High School Musical.  In a good way.

The concert was good.  Really good.  I can't believe I could talk or hear anything afterwards.  It brought back all of those great feelings of being a kid again.  I had a blast and loved every minute of it.  Except the Lady Gaga part.

We were on cloud nine.

Until we tried to find the cab who was supposed to take us back to the hotel.

See you later...

Tomorrow I will be seeing a lot of this:

photo: greg westfall

and a lot of this:

photo: Aaron Escobar

and a lot of this:

photo: extranoise

and hopefully lots of these:

photo: google images

and also NONE of these:

photo: google images

Wish me luck!

I hope to continue to post while I'm gone. Hope you have a great weekend!

Take a Mini-Vacation

With the price of everything steadily rising, it is important to be smart with recreational fun.

Problem: Expensive hotels and travel expenses

Solution: Stay with friends nearby, but not in our hometown and do their cool local stuff

We stayed with our friends in Newport News, VA this weeks for several days and had a blast. It was just the kids and I...Mike had to work.

The Virginia Living Museum is an excellent local trip. We all enjoyed it. The friends we stayed with only live about 15 minutes away from the museum, and visit it often, so they have annual memberships.

There is currently a dinosaur exhibit, complete with robotic dinosaurs...a big hit!

The exhibit is complete with baby dinosaurs hatching:

The food chain in display:

A "bare bones" robotic dinosaur stripped of his skin. The kids could control the movements of this one and even make him roar. Kind of spooky:

There were plenty of photo opps:
Hands on areas where the kids could get up close and personal with local sea creatures:

A wildlife reserve path outside that includes many fun animals to observe: beavers, otters, pelicans, coyotes, and bobcats (among others):

There were cool "discovery centers" where the kids could learn about geology, archeology, animal tracks-ology, and fossil-ology. I liked the sign that said, "Discovery area: DO TOUCH!":

Our trip concluded with a fashion show in the museum's gift shop:

Although the museum admission was not inexpensive at $15 for me and $12 each for the kiddos, I feel that our little mini vacation was frugal because we kept the travel expenses low: we didn't go very far from home (only 1 hour drive) and had no hotel expenses. We also enjoyed the nearby beach the next day which was a ton of fun and frugal as well, but alas, the camera was left in the car.

Want more frugal ideas? Go here.

Tybee Island, Georgia

This is a slideshow from last September when my husband & I (no kiddos) celebrated our 10 year anniversary at Tybee Island, GA. It was wonderful. I just thought I'd share my smilebox creation here. Enjoy!

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

Heavenly Hilton Head Holiday!

Memorial Day week, we had a marvelous time at the BEACH! Oh, how I love the beach! I didn't want to do anything but set my self in a chair in the sand all. day. long. every. day. But my dear hubby reminded me that this was indeed a family vacation, not just a mommy vacation! :)

FISHIN'

Here are all of our fisherpeople doin' their thing. Yes. They caught several shark off the beach. I know. Yowsers. But we swam anyway.

This silly bird was our fishin' buddy. He came out every time we started to fish and hung around...getting closer and closer to the fisherpeople. He got little pieces of bait that had been dropped...and one time he snuck a whole fish from someone's bucket! He's got some nerve!

THA BEACH
Here are some pictures of Zach and Taylor playing on the beach. A really cool thing about the beaches at Hilton Head - tidepools form when the tide goes out. It is really fun for the kiddos to search for fun sea creatures in the tidepools...Taylor and Zach found hermit crabs, starfish, sand dollars, and even a baby blowtoad. Way fun.

I buried Zach in the sand. He was so excited for it! :)

Mike taught Taylor how to boogie board. She caught on really fast and spent tons of time doing it. Zach, on the other hand, decided to use his boogie board as a mailtruck. He dragged it behind himself carrying various beach finds.

One evening after dinner, we went back down to the beach so Mike and Taylor could fish. We stopped at our favorite beach ice cream joint (which happened to be across the street from our condo). Taylor enjoyed blue raspberry ice...as evidenced by these pictures.

This was our lovely view at the pool. I LOVE, Love, LOVE the spanish moss! Did I mention that I love spanish moss?



We did a lot of walking on the beach too.

LOVE this picture of the kiddos. They were sitting on a lifeguard chair in the evening. This shows true emotion. No canned smiles in this picture. :)

I love both of these pictures of Zach. Model much?

We saw this cool tree on the way to breakfast one morning. Couldn't resist the photo op.

I wanted a picture of our whole fam when we were showered and not in bathing suits, so I stopped some poor mom with a toddler and asked her to take our picture. I apologized the whole time cause I knew she was busy. But I really wanted a family pic from our vacation.