Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Good luck getting this one to load...

So all, I thought I'd put up a couple of video's from the concerts that we went to last weekend! Make sure you to to the bottom of the page and turn off the playlist before you start these! Oh, and you might want to turn your speakers up a little louder! :D Make it feel more "concerty"!
This first one is from the Remedy Drive concert on Friday night.

And this one is from the Friday concert too. We were too close to the speakers to get good ones of while they were singing, but these were fun ;)

This one is Rush of Fools singing "Undo" at Ignite Chicago.

Third Day singing "Cry Out To Jesus" at Ignite Chicago.

"God of Wonders". With lots of crowd voices...

Doing some neat jammin'.


"Gone." :D

Hope you enjoyed these! I know I did...

I love having kids around...

I just overheard this conversation between Rachel and Karley...
K: What you doing "Waycho?"
R: Standing right here...
K: Why?
R: Because I can.
K: Oh, okay! I luh you "Waycho!"
:D I'm not even going to spellcheck this post!!

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Never ask your Mom how to title a blog post...

Hey!
Well, I figured It'd be a little boring to just have your basic
blog titles like "Tuesday", or "Ignite Chicago", or "Water Fight"
so I asked Mom if she had any ideas for a crazy title. It didn't
even need to have anything to do with what I was blogging
about, but I just wanted to have a more attention grabbing
post title. Mom wasn't much help though... So thus, the
title we have.
But... Here are pictures from the Remedy Drive concert
that Criky, Zoe, Mrs. Z, Mom and I got to go to on Friday!
Of course while trying to get into the "concert going mood"
we took silly pictures on the car drive!
Hi MOM!!!
Hi MOM again!!!! :)Yes, so... like I said, silly pictures.
I "needed" a snack for the way there...
Pretzel M&M's made a great one!
Awww, we're so sweet...
Practicing our "don't mess with us" faces :)
The neat-o sign!
Waiting for it to start...
We're so excited!!!!
Sigh... I couldn't figure out what camera setting I needed
in order to get very good pictures :(
And we didn't have as good of places to stand like we
did at Ignite... But we still had tons of fun!
So, I guess just enjoy these blurry everybody-else's-hands-in-pics...
Yahoo!!! :)
We weren't really very far away from the stage, but
since I'm a little shorter than... everyone else there, you
get to stare at the backs of a bunch of strangers...
All of the Remedy Drive guys had neat reflecty strips on
their clothing! The camera flash really made it stand out.
Even though its blurry I like this picture!
Lets not call it blurry... We'll just claim its... Artistic?? :)
With all the jumping, sitting, kneeling, and headstands they do
on the keyboard, I wonder if they've broken any??
Sing Mr. Guitarman, SING!
Beating on a drum (while yet again standing on the keyboard),
and the drumstick accidentally flew out of his hand and hit
somebody in the crowd... Oops!
But then the hit-by-drumstick person got to play the drum
for the rest of the song so I'm sure they didn't mind!
Nice.
Granted, that's what they get paid for, but bands always look
like they are having so much fun on stage!
(I'd just look like I was going to puke...) (Or, I'd get
up there and everyone else would puke...)
Remedy Drive was the only band playing that night,
so I got to hear all my favorite songs of theirs!
:) Every once and a while I'd look back and wonder what
our Mom's were thinking... :)
And every time they'd plaster on smiles and wave!
Hahaha!
And later they assured me that they "Really enjoyed
getting to hang out with us"... :D
They put on a really great concert!
Lots of fun, and just enough serious.
And their main theme was Hope and Perseverance...
Quite timely for me at least...
I'm really glad we got to go!
After the concert was over the band guys went to the back
of the building to talk to people as they left and sign
autographs...
So Zoe and I went around and had our concert shirts signed :)
Here's the drummer, Daniel.
And Mr. Guitarman Paul.
The headstand-on-the-piano guy, and singer David. :)
I'd gotten a black shirt. And black sharpie doesn't really show
up on a black shirt so they signed really tiny on the white writing.
Aanndd then we got home and I realized the shirt I'd gotten
was the wrong size... :( So I gave it to Rachel!
But that made me feel better because she hadn't gotten to
be at the concert...
And the bass player, Philip.
(Who we decided that bass playing is just his alter-ego.
He looks like the guy who was Crystal's tandem jumper
so that's really what he does!) :)
We told our Mom's to get in a "afterconcert" picture, and
that they had to look happy! I think they did a good job! :)
Wahoo! That was awesome!
:D Dairy Queen was right down the street...
And Crystal just spit lemon-lime arctic rush all over the table :/
Instead of wristbands or anything, in order to go into the concert
we had to get sharpie dots on our hands...
And WE got to go!!
So now let's take crazy pictures on the way home!
(Because it's fun to freak the driver out with a
camera flash in the back of the dark car!)
We're so tough!
Peace!
Lovely...
OOOooohhhhh!
Mustaches! (Is that how you say the plural of mustache?)
:D Move the camera around while going past other cars
and take a picture and this might look like something you'd
come up with...
Or this if it's a semi!
Thanks Mom's for taking us!
We had a great time!!!


Your loving daughters. :)

Monday, July 26, 2010

Ignite Chicago!!

Soooo, in case the title of this post didn't already give it away,
Crik, Dad, Rach and I got to go to Ignite Chicago on Saturday!!
For those poor uninformed ones of you, Ignite Chicago
is a big Christian Concert/Event. It's held at Alexian
Field (minor league baseball stadium) in Schaumburg, and
they have 10 different bands that play on Saturday and Sunday.
We only got to go on Saturday, but it was SO much fun!

The bands we got to see perform were: Lightswitch, After Edmund,
Remedy Drive (who Crystal and I had gotten to see at a different
concert the night before) :D, Rush of Fools, Leeland, Sanctus Real,
Matthew West, Barlowgirl, Jeremy Camp, and Third Day!
It. Was. Amazing!

Of course on the drive up there Rach and I were getting a little
bored in the backseat... I started getting carsick so I had to
stop reading my book, so I started snapping mindless pics...
Just be glad I'm not posting all of them :)
Dad drove and Criky was co-pilot... See, Stevey (the gps) and
Mapquest had a bit of a disagreement so we just used a mix
of information from both of them...
No, we were not excited.
Haha, Rachel's little addition to our entertainment :)
Rachel's bracelets...
Oh! A rain poncho! ...yay??
Hi there!
Why are you taking my picture???
Wahoo! We made it! Even with Stevey and Mapquests
little disagreement :P
Our "fancy" wristbands...
With these super important pieces of paper we were able to
get in and out of the stadium without being beaten up by the
security guys :D
So, after waiting in line for a while to get our super important
"fancy" wristbands we got to wait on the stairway leading into the
stadium for a while. So we took more mindless pictures...
Because it was calling for so much rain and was so cloudy in the
morning not a ton of people had shown up by the time we arrived.
So that means we got some pretty great seats! :D
Dad occupied himself by singing Tenth Avenue North songs
(no matter how we tried to convince him, he just couldn't believe
that with all the other bands T.A.N. was not going to be there),
and reading all the little pamphlets we got :P
The concert finally started!!
Unfortunately, because of all the rain we weren't allowed
out on the field because everything was so saturated. So even
though we had great seats we were still pretty far away from
the stage... The bands all played great though!
I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it! :D

Lightswitch was the first band that played.
I'd never heard of them before, and was surprised because
they are really good!
So yeah... All these pictures look the same, but for real,
its pictures of different bands! You just can't tell because
the pictures are so small on here!

This was After Edmund.
They put on a really fun show!
:D And Dad used the title of one of their songs for a sermon
illustration on Sunday! Lol, the song was called
"Dance Like You're From The Future"...
Yes, Dad comes up with some 'unique' messages :D
(I mean that in a good way!!!)
And Remedy Drive!!!
It was really fun seeing these guys perform two days in a row!
:( But I didn't get any "headstand on the piano" pictures...
Rush of Fools!! I've been wanting to see them in concert
for quite a while, so it was really cool that we got to see them there!
Aaaannnd they even played my favorite song of theirs! :D
Me and Mitch, the singer from After Edmund!
He decided that pictures needed to be more fun
and was trying to come up with different poses do do with
whatever person came by :D
Hahaha, this is what he came up with for me...
Sanctus Real!
Ahh I like this band...
It was cloudy for most of the day, but the sun still
managed to keep everything bright and very warm...
Very warm.
Leeland.
Crystal and I were out waiting in signing lines while
they played... But we "watched them from afar" and could
hear them quite well :)
As the day went on, more and more people braved the
worrisome weather report and filled up the stands!
Hmm, why do they call them "stands" if they are really seats??
Oh look! Traffic cones! :D
In Sanctus Real's signing line...
The other Sanctus Real's signing my shirt.
I guess you'd probably call them Sanctus Real "members"
but just saying The "other" Sanctus Real's sounds so much funnier!
Eric from the KLOVE Morning Show was there,
so I went to say hello and ended up getting my picture
taken too :o)
Judson University was the main sponsor for the
event, so during some of the intermissions they came
out and talked and did advertising for their school ;)
Even though it was partly cloudy most of the day we still ended
up catching quite a few UV rays... Rach got some pretty
"ouchy" sunburn on her legs... Ouch!
Emily and Matt were there with a few of their friends,
they were sitting on the other side of the stadium but came
to visit during one of the soundchecks!
Me and Crystal goofing off during one of the soundchecks...
It's just what we do... :P
Matthew West!
I'd never seen him in concert before either, so that was
pretty fun! He even made up one of his "original"
'it doesn't rhyme but talks about whatever event he's at'
verses to one of his songs :)
In the signing line for Leeland!
It was neat getting to meet all the artists and their bands!
And my shirt looks pretty great with all those autographs too...
Matthew West!
Lightswitch didn't had too many people coming by their table
that they ran out of room, so when they were signing autographs
they were using peoples backs...
It reminded me of that game where you tape paper to somebody's
back and then they have to guess what you just wrote from
what they felt.
Barlowgirl!
They are probably my favorite all-girl band so I was
really glad that they were there!

And they announced that it had dried enough so that we could
finally go out on the field!!
There was just a ton of people who RAN to get there!
The 4 of us must be pretty fast runners because we got there
really quick and got great spots by the stage!
We were only 3 rows of people back from the barriers
they had set up around the stage!
Since we were so close to the stage I got some pretty good
pictures! Heh, I got a lot of bad/blurry ones too.
I think the main thing is I got a LOT of pictures...
It was hard just picking out a few to put on here!
Its normally really hard to get a good picture of the drummer
in a band becuase they are ordinarally positioned right behind
the singer, but Barlowgirl had the stage set up differently
(I guess there are perks to being a 3 person band), and I got
a couple of cool, very clear pictures!
I wonder if they practiced turning around at the same time
or if it just happened like that?? I'm guessing they probably
practiced beforehand...
:D I love this picture!
Ah Ha! Multitasker! Keyboard and Guitar!
Hmm... I think I might be a little envious of her awesome
red guitar...
We were so close to O'hare airport that there
were planes flying over ALL day. Thankfully they were
high enough up there that you couldn't really even hear them.
This guy was from Judson University.
I think he said he was the leader of the Worship Arts program.
He sang a couple of songs while Jeremy Camp's stuff got set up.
Gotta love Dad's face in this one...
Emily and Matt were just a couple rows of people behind us.
We got to have a couple of "stand on tiptoe and yell back and
forth conversations". It was fun getting to have other people
that we knew standing nearby!
Jeremy Camp singing "Give Me Jesus".
Love that song...
It sounded so pretty as a piano song too!
:) Crowd involvement...
I'm proud to say I was hoarse on our way home!
Once it started to get dark the lights made everything look
even cooler! Especially when they would have lots of colors!
Short message.
It was a good one too!
I thought it was neat how easily they switched
from rock show to worship. And it was really great
to hear all those voices of all the people singing out
praises to our Creator and honoring Him!
It made me wonder what our Enemy was thinking, and
so I smiled smugly down at the little bit of ground I could
see around all the feet and said hahaha :D
I liked the lights in this one!
:P More crowd involvement...
The pretty pink sky!
Somebody brought bubbles! :D
Another Multitasker! :)
:D And another good 'drummer picture'.
We really were lucky to have such good places to stand...
And it was really dark by the time these guys got
to play so their lights looked awesome!
We were also lucky that the camera battery lasted throughout
the whole day! 10 hours and 400ish pictures later it started
getting tired though... But it finished out the rest of the night!
Ha. Ha. Ha. I really like this picture!
I love the whole red smoke thing!
As the night wore on and the crowd shifted somewhat
I was able to move up to the stage barriers!
So let's rephrase that... GREAT place to stand!!!! :D
Yes, I know... I went a little in to overkill on the pictures, but
when else might I have the chance to be so close to stage at
a concert?? So you'll all just have to "suffer" by looking
at all of them.
Third Day!
We even got to hear a couple songs off of the new
album they are working on! :D
Singing "Gone For Now"...
Quite a good song to finish off the evening :)
All done... Headed to the cars...
Sort of sad that the day had to be over, but It was
a wonderful one!! :D
And I got to drive the second part of the way home.
Great way to end a day! (or actually, in this case it was "start"
a day... Because it was Sunday already) :)