WinterJam! One Rockin' Night...

Saturday night we went to the WinterJam Tour Spectacular :)

This year it came to Dekalb, so we didn't have to drive very far (yay!!)

And Samantha W. got to come along with us so that made it at least 10x more fun! Our chauffeurs :P
Some of our 'snacks'... I made some granola (which actually managed to turn
out okay!) And Mom was having a popcorn craving...

The real sustenance! Laffy Taffy, Shockers, Cookie Dough Bites, and Pixie Stix.

Oh, and don't forget the glow sticks! :D No, we didn't eat those...

Finally there! Good grief was it cold outside! Originally we had planned on being

at the concert at least an hour earlier that we ended up getting there... But after

waiting for certain members of our party to get to our designated meeting

place so they could follow us to the concert building, and the snowy roads...

We only had to wait outside for about 5-10 minutes! I was okay with that!
Brrrrrrrr!

Yay yay yay!!! We got floor seats! There were some really tall guys

blocking our view so we just stood on our chairs :) Female ingenuity!

This was Chris Sligh. He was really neat to get to see! He was a finalist on

American Idol. (He finished 10th on the 6th season).

And wow, does he have a voice!

Chris August. This guy was a mainstream musician/singer and over the

past two years he re-dedicated his life to Christ and has started singing in

the Christian music 'scene'. He was quite fun! He sang this really crazy

song about eating too much candy... :P Pretty funny!

Crystal's friends Priscilla and Tony were there with some other friends

and they came and sat with us for most of the evening! It was lovely

getting to hang out with them. Of course we didn't get to do much talking,

but we got to laugh and watch each other be goofy at a concert, and really enjoy

the music together!

It was more fun yelling at each other to get them to hear you than it

would have been to just converse in a normal voice!

See Dad and Mom down there at the end??
They're kind enough to humor us and take us to concerts even though it's

not necessarily their 'thing'.

:) We're so special... :D

Awww...

Do you like our shirts? We had both gotten new shirts

the day before and decided there was no greater place to 'break them in' than

at a concert! :P

Sidewalk Prophets, (the 'The Words I Would Say' guys...)
We've seen them quite a few times, and I think I enjoy them more

each time I see them!

KJ-52. :) He sort of was like our host for the evening. He would

announce some of the other bands, and would also sing, er, rap a song

while the stage was getting set up for them.

*Shouts of glee mixed with Rach and I hugging each other*

This is RED. :D:D:D:D:D Although we loved seeing/hearing all the bands

that played, this band got done and I grabbed her head and yelled into her

ear that "If we had to leave now I'd still go completely satisfied" :D

And they had FIRE! :D It would shoot out in streams from behind

the drums to the beat of the music during the choruses of some

of their songs! (I'll post videos later!)

And of course fog machines!

Newsong. These guys are the ones who put on/sponsor WinterJam!

So needless to say we were quite appreciative to them!

During one of the waits for the next band they had a couple youth pastors from

the audience come up and they got to 'giant slingshot shoot' some T-shirts into

the crowd! And one of the youth pastors was a guy that we know! (the guy in white).
So yes, my Dad did jump and wave and yell "Hi Tom!" And no, Tom didn't hear,

or shoot us any shirts...

Next up was Francesca Battistelli. She and her guitar playing band

members played ukulele for one song, it made me laugh!

And then there was the David Crowder* Band! :D
They are always so fun! :D And this time when David Crowder invited

everyone to 'hoedown' during one of the songs Rach and I started a Conga

line and bounced along the aisle for a while. We got 20 or so people (outside of

family members and people we came with) to join us too, before the security guy

told us to quit. And that was probably okay because if we'd have gone on

much longer we may have needed oxygen. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted!

Personally, I found it quite enjoyable to see a violinist on the stage!

Heh, this guy does have really wild hair!

And Kutless! Rachel and I have wanted to see these guys for quite a while,

so it was great to finally get to see them. They put on such a touching

worship set, and it was beautiful.

The had really cool backgrounds too!

Notice the tree in this one?

This background's awesome too!

And the Newsboys!

These guys really know how to put on a show!

The had risers, and fog, and their drummers riser could spin and tilt!

They had the drummer whipping around at a 90 degree angle to the ground!

If I had been the drummer I would have surely fallen out or gotten sick

or something!! :P

Cool huh!?

I didn't even have to stand on my chair to get this one :)

Such a good night! On the way home (after thawing out our drinks which

had frozen solid in the van while we were inside) and finally eating, we

were in crazy moods and talked so much that we got to Dixon and none

of us realized that we had been anywhere near home!
That's the best way to travel! :D

That was a great night! I'm all for doing again as soon as we get

another opportunity!

This 21st Day.

It is the 21st day of January already!!
These last few weeks have been fairly quiet ones... We've been passing
colds around from family member to family member :/ Dad and Josh came
down with colds about 3 weeks ago, and Rachel had the flu. Crystal and I,
although we vowed that we were going to "stay healthy" by taking all the
vitamins we could and getting lots of rest, and all that stuff... Well... Crystal
started coughing at the beginning of the week, and then Rach and I came
down with the "dreaded illness" too (moan). But thankfully, now we are all
on the mend and almost completely recovered!!! :D And we get to go to a
concert tomorrow!! It's the WinterJam concert, so we get to see 10 bands
for 10 dollars! So we get to stand in the cold waiting for the doors to open
for an hour (but hopefully that will grant us good seats), but I'm sure the
concert itself will totally make up for little bit of a chill we might get.

We had a wonderful night last night as well! Jason and Alyssa came over
for supper and we played games and got to do a lot of talking and laughing!
Just what we needed to boost our spirits on this cold cloudy week.

Anyway, look for some awesome concert pictures, come Sunday or Monday!
And, dear blog followers, HAVE A WONDERFUL WEEKEND!!!

Morning With Criky.

Well I, being the good sister I try ever so hard to be ;) was with

Crystal needed a 'helperton' this morning to help her out with the sports

photo shoots that she had to do. :/ It was cold, and early.

Perks... I did get to watch the sun rise...

My lap. I'd be prepared for pretty much anything if I was equipped
with this 'gear' :) My 'suitcase' purse and the gloves mostly... Yes, keep your eyes on the road!! But do lean in so I can get a picture!

We re-created the upstairs babysitting room in the YMCA into our

photo taking area! Oh, and I got to watch the eagles as they flew around

outside. They are so beautiful! I'm so thankful that they come to Dixon!It was basketball pictures. :D

My job... I got to be 'secretary'. Which was simple (thank goodness!!)

Oooh, paper clip! :D I had to do something... We had quite a few breaks

in between the shoots. :D

Crystal doing... something!

And now tonight, my dog's sitting on my lap as Dad and I are watching

some old war movie... Mom and Crystal are sleeping, and poor Rach isn't

feeling very good :(

Happy weekend everyone!!

:D 'Cuz We Can...

A little weird?? Goofy? Um, haven't you guessed that that's one thing

we do pretty well?? :) Rach and I were in our room the other day and

were a little bored... Plus she got these 'wonderful' glasses at the theater...

So we took some pictures. Just 'cuz we could!Awww :) We're pretty sweet aren't we ;)

Bwahahahahaha!!! Well, I hope we amused you as much as we did ourselves...

7th Anniversary :)

January 4th 2004, we met some pretty special people...

Little did we know how it would change our lives.

Here we thought it was just our parents being their regular "lets make

the newbies welcome to church" selves... And maybe that's how it started, but

now, 7 years later we've got some wonderful dear friends that we love and that have

changed our lives :)To celebrate this momentous occasion we went out to dinner.

We were going to end up at "Primos" to see Dan and Magdalena, but then we

remembered that Magdalena was in Florida, so we went to Amboy instead.

We ended up at "The Long Branch". We used to go there for most of the

birthdays and anniversaries for the family members on my Dad's side. :D

It was a lovely night, and it was so nice to get to hang out with the Rogers
and celebrate our 7th anniversary ;)
And after dinner we went to Mendota Hills to have dessert and
ended up addressing/filling out the electric bills for our "during dessert
project". :) Hope we did okay!!

Once and a while I find that I associate 'change' with 'uncomfortably bad'.
In this case though change was a good thing. A real good thing.
:) Thanks Rogers family for changing our lives!

New Years Day.

Can you believe it's 2011?!

Yayyy!! A whole fresh new year! It's been pretty good so far ;)

New Years Day we broke our normal new years day routine of sleeping

until we can't sleep anymore and then watching movies literally ALL day

and the only people we see are the ones that come to our house...

Mourey and Marge invited us to visit them! Mourey made us some

wonderful pancakes! Sourdough! I didn't think that sounded like it would make

very good pancakes but I was wrong!

We had our late breakfast and then...

Lauren called!! So we got to talk with her and Wolfgang!

And that turned into a Skype session! :)
So we got to "see" them too!

But we couldn't get the speakers to work so they called and we used Skype

to see each other and speakerphone to hear.

Ingenious!

We were all in the little computer room crunched in close so we could all

fit into the computer cameras 'eye'.

Who would have ever thought that the first day of January would look like this!?

Looks can be deceiving though... It was really cold out!!
Our 1 1/2 ft. of snow was gone though thanks to Aunt T who had been praying

f0r 60's for New Years Eve (the day of her son's wedding). Wouldn't you know,

Thursday it was like 45 degrees, Friday (wedding day) was like 58!!! And after the

wedding the temperature started dropping. By the evening it was in the 40's, and by

midnight it was 30's. New Years Day dawned bright, sunny, and freezing!!

Really windy and it didn't even break 20!

Back to winter! It looked really warm anyway!

Dad brought along his new birthday game, Jenga!
It was funny watching them play! Good friends, coffee, lots of talking, it was a nice relaxing day!