Junior High love conquers all! :)

Ahhhh.......come on.......you loved the New Kids on the Block too! Admit it! In Junior high, I got into probably the most trouble I ever did in my youth by attending their concert at Roberts Stadium in Evansville, Indiana! My parents weren't at home when my BF Gina called and said, "my aunt's offered to take us over there, so if you want to go, we need to know NOW so we can order tickets before they sell out!" well DUH....what's ANY 14-year old girl going to say? HECK YES GET ME A TICKET! :P So when the parentals came home, I told them they owed Gina's aunt $35 (a FORTUNE in those days) for a ticket to a concert I didn't ask permission to go to. Oh the grounding that followed was TOTALLY WORTH IT! :P I had a blast at that concert, in the worst seats (literally, the back row....i thought for sure i was going to plummet 30 feet to my death off those risers!), but it was major fun. And I assumed that'd be my first and last New Kids experience......until this past Monday night!

So Monday, I'm at work waiting for 'the call' from my SIL and her BFF Emily that they were in town so I could bug out and hang with them. Then I ended up getting called into a last-minute meeting and ended up not being able to leave a minute earlier than usual. BAH! But, since I"m hoping for a JOB from this particular manager, I figured I'd better not bail and say, "I gotta go up in the arch with my friends that're ditching work!"......might not make the best impression, huh? But I left work around 3 and headed downtown to meet up with Nicole and Emily.

Our first stop was the arch. Since Karl is deathly afraid of heights and there's no way in hades I'd EVER get him up in this thing (and Karl's brother Kurt is the exact same way, so Nicole feels my pain), we thought this would be the perfect opportunity to go up in the arch. So we took some outside pics of us and the arch and then headed inside to get our tickets. Then we got into our little 'pod' for the ride up to the top. Now I'm not claustrophobic by any means, but I can see that if anybody WAS, this would be an issue:

Me, Nicole, and the Gateway Arch:

how tiny the pods actually are:

squished together for the 'pod ride' to the top:

While at the top, we looked out over the lovely overcast city of St. Louis.

Then we had to do the ride back down. Emily wasn't too thrilled about the ride, but Nicole and I just took pictures of her all freaked out and laughed. We're so nice. :P

Then we headed to their hotel room and changed into our 'concert garb' ......then decided to go ahead and park my car at the Scottrade Center and walk to dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe at Union Station. We had to wait about an hour for our table since the entire downtown was packed with 30-something women in groups reliving their junior high years just like us. We didn't go as far reminiscing as others did with the legwarmers, crimped hair, and old concert t-shirts. But it sure was fun crowd watching all the other NKOTB fans!

Don't we look cute though?

After dinner, we made a quick stop at the car to drop off some stuff we'd bought at Union Station and then headed inside to the concert. Natasha Beddingfield was the opening act, and none of us really cared about missing out on her....so we hit the souvie stands to make sure we all got our proper tshirts! Nicole and I got the "Property of Donnie Walhberg" shirts, and Emily got a pink concert tour one. Life is good!

The concert itself was so much fun! Granted, Madonna put on a better show, but these guys were so much more FUN! We were on our feet almost the entire time, screaming, singing, and yelling. And I must say, these guys have aged quite gracefully:

"Please Don't Go Girl"!!! *sigh*.......

*SWOON*!!! I can understand how they ended up with half a dozen pairs of panties on the stage! :P I stole those closeups from the post-dispatch...so while I didn't take them, they were from our concert at least! I took over 400 pics with the big camera that I managed to sneak in.....how do you sneak in a camera in the summertime I wonder? Hooray for big bulky coats, I say! :P Here's the view from OUR seats:

Still not too bad! so we had a GREAT time reliving our youth at the NKOTB concert! Look how much fun we're having:

Tuesday, thanks to getting home at 1AM from the concert and having "a few" drinks, I called in sick. :P The rest of the week was uneventful after that. I was kinda sick for most of it (unrelated to any margarita consumption!). Did the usual of running the kids to their activities and such.....

Saturday, we took the kids to their swimming lessons, had lunch at arby's, then after naps we had our family portraits taken at Sears. I'm always leery of pictures and Zach. He's 2. He doesn't cooperate! BUT this time he DID! YAY! I'm still in shock and thrilled.....so everybody on our Christmas card list will be getting a lovely portrait of the kids all dressed up and smiley! Which just reminds me that I've done NO shopping...haven't started my Christmas letter...and am otherwise all-around totally unprepared for the approaching holidays!!! *sigh*....time to get with it!

So that was our week.....now onto the layouts I've done. I did a lot less scrapping than normal thanks to having that nasty heady cold most of the week. These first two are of the kids' school pictures, using Sya's new templates she released a few days ago....they both took really good school pics this year, I was impressed!

Then I did another one from our UK trip......gotta love Big Ben!

And of Matthew's soccer portraits:

And this was our dinner at the Hard Rock Monday night:

This week's blessing......my family heritage as it concerns the Caudle Schoolhouse at Brush Creek. It's the ONLY claim to fame my family has, so I gotta work with it!

Journaling reads: My family doesn’t have any sort of claim to fame, but the one thing that we are all very proud of is the history of the Caudle schoolhouse. My Great-great grandfather Samuel Caudle gave to the church the land that later would become the Brush Creek Campground. The schoolhouse for the neighborhood was also on his land, and it was in this little log schoolhouse that the Brush Creek branch of our church began. It is the oldest congregation in the area, and the only congregation that never was disorganized after the death of Joseph Smith. So the Caudle schoolhouse holds a special place in the hearts of the church members in the area for the history that it represents. I am so proud and blessed for the part myo wn family played in all of this history.This is my Family Heritage.

And that's it for me. Matthew wants to watch Speed Racer again (we rented it last night....worst movie EVER! kids have no taste I swear!), but laundry and a very messy daughter's room are calling my name.....so until next post, have a good one!