Forced Family Fun, Part One

When we got Jacob's lacrosse schedule this year, it was apparent that with only two tournaments, one of which was in Syracuse, our tournament-related travels wouldn't be too extensive.  Still, we wanted to make the most of our one trip to Watertown since we don't get up there often and it was a good time to be off work.  But then the passport issue popped up and the dreams of finally traveling to Ottawa or making it to Montreal in warm weather faded away.  We'd talked about going to Lake Placid before, so now seemed to be the perfect time.  The kids weren't thrilled about it, but sometimes you just have to do things and hope they appreciate them later.

I took the day off on Wednesday, since this was my one easy week to take off at work.  My boss took off the whole thing, so three days was all I could really muster, and it ended up being important to be there anyway after the laptop theft and all.  All's well with that, by the way--as much as it can be--although I did realize they also stole my backup sunglasses in my car.  Hope they enjoy those fancy $5 Walmart specs.  I never did get to wear them, and I really liked that case that I got years ago for free at my old job.  Darn it.  Anyway, Craig was working a half day and Carter went to daycare, since I didn't request that day off in time.  Since I hadn't really been exercising much over the past week or two, I decided that I needed to take advantage of the nice weather that morning and get in a workout.  It was way too humid to run, but it was a perfect morning for a bike ride!  I wound through a couple neighborhoods and ended up at the Erie Canal path.  It was so lovely.

See that goose in the middle of the path?  He hissed at me.  He did not like me being anywhere near his crew.  Never had to stop a bike ride for geese before.

I rode nearly to the next town and finally turned back around to head home.  I still had packing to do, after all!  I snapped this pic first, though.  Canal life is so pleasant.  

I took a path home through Greece Canal Park, and couldn't help but laugh when I saw a dad and two boys on bikes near the park entrance, all looking at their devices.  I have no idea what was happening there.  My ride was just over an hour and just short of 10 miles.  Jacob was waiting for me at home, and it turned out something spooked him and he was convinced someone was in the house, so he hid in the bathroom while I was gone.  Ugh.  I made up for it with some time in the pool.  I vacuumed it while simultaneously playing ring toss with Jacob, and it was such a great morning for pool time with him.  We had a lot of fun!

I did some frantic packing and once Craig came home and we finished up loading the van, we swung by daycare to grab Carter, and we were off!  We had a bit of a hike ahead of us, as Lake Placid was five hours away.  We strategically planned to stop at the Red Robin in Watertown for dinner to use Jacob's birthday coupon, since it was a perfect halfway point.  It gave us a preview of where our two other hotels were, since we'd be back in this area for most of the rest of the trip.  I was able to get a reasonable-ish room in Lake Placid for July 3rd, but the 4th was out of the question!  The drive to Lake Placid was pretty interesting, I guess.  We drove around Fort Drum, then hit lots of trees and winding roads, and lots of little towns and houses of questionable inhabitability.  Unfortunately, it got dark as we really got to the mountains, so that was a little harrowing.  We did enjoy driving through Tupper Lake and Saranac Lake, though, and even saw some fireworks as we passed through Saranac.

When we arrived in Lake Placid, it was really interesting.  The main tourist area looked pretty cool.  I spotted the optician shop owned by my childhood friend's family, and we scoped out shops to visit the next day.  When we arrived at our hotel, we were rather unhappy to discover (particularly at 10pm) that the parking lot appeared to be full.  It took a good 45 minutes (and a couple stressful, unsuccessful attempts) to figure out where we were parking, and even then it was going to involve a very early wake-up to ensure we were legally parked for the day.  By then I was about ready to turn around and go home (or at least was seriously regretting my non-cancellable reservation).  It was not a good hour or so trying to park and unload and get everyone settled in the room.  The hotel was clearly pretty old but very nicely redone.  The lobby was full of character and the elevator was tiny, but we were pretty shocked when we got to our room and saw how cool it was.  I wish we would have had more time to enjoy it!  

I think I finally got to sleep around midnight, but for various reasons (as usual nowadays) I didn't sleep well.  Then I had to wake up at 5:45am to walk down the street and pay for parking.  When we parked in the municipal lot the night before, the parking meter said "Free until 6am" and wouldn't let you pay ahead.  But if it became a pay lot again at 6am, apparently we needed to take care of that!  So, I made myself decent enough and walked down the road just before 6.  It was so incredibly peaceful.  

Mountains!  And you can't see it, but on the other side of that building is Mirror Lake.

Main Street was very quaint, and compared to the busyness the night before, it was a little surreal seeing it empty at sunrise.  This was about 1/3 of the way back to the hotel, and our hotel was the taller building on the left.

We were up for the day by 9 or so, and I wished we had more time to enjoy our balcony!  It only overlooked the parking lot, but it's rare we stay somewhere with one so it was neat.  There were a lot of older hotels in this area with balconies, and a lot fewer cookie cutter chains...hence the trouble finding a reasonable hotel.

The room was pretty cool, too.  We even had a sitting room!  The décor was pretty cool and modern woodsy, too.

The bathroom was on the other side of that blue wall, and had a separate toilet/shower space apart from the sink, which is the best!

I would have shown more, but the room was a mess by morning!

The lobby was cute.  It looked even better at night with white lights and the antler chandelier lit up...but clearly I was in no mood for pictures then!

And they had a bobsled!

We took a stroll down Main Street to find breakfast, and finally settled on a little café that the gluten-free app suggested.  Jacob was able to get an Udi's muffin, we had breakfast sandwiches, and Carter got this monster!

Once we were done, we walked back down the road to visit some of the Olympic-themed shops.  And we saw this...

Mirror Lake looked beautiful, and it was already full of people participating in various water activities.

We eventually made it back down the street to start our day at the Olympic Center!  Carter was excited to find snow and delighted in throwing it to the ground with a big jump.  

The other side of that wall was a sign that said, "It's no miracle - It's real snow!"  It had to be coming from the Zamboni inside, but it was funny to see in 80+ degree temps!

It turned out that there were three rinks in this complex, along with the Winter Olympics museum.  This was the entrance to the original rink from the first time Lake Placid hosted the Olympics.

I got a kick out of these doors to the rink itself, because I'm pretty sure my grandpa was really into Sonja Henie, who won the gold on this rink in 1932. Jack Shea was a local resident who won two gold medals in speed skating and ended up having two more generations of Olympians in his family.

We were eager to take the tour and get the full experience, but even prior, it was pretty amazing to see these doors to the rink where the "Miracle on Ice" happened!

We started our visit with the Winter Olympics Museum.  It was full of Olympic memorabilia, not just from Lake Placid but from other Winter Olympics, as well.  The boys enjoyed some non-ice-based curling...

Apparently Carter came out on top!

They had U.S. opening ceremony uniforms...

And a collection of stuffed mascots...

And, of course, lots of Miracle on Ice memorabilia...

The sport coat is a replica of Herb Brooks' coat from when they filmed the movie "Miracle".  The case below has all of the IDs from the team, plus a gold medal.

Apparently mascot production has made great strides in 40 years, because Roni was a little disturbing.  Even the logo on the shirt looked pretty amateur!

The collection of torches was pretty amazing.  Lake Placid's is the fourth from left.  The really tall one was Lillehammer.  They've gotten decidedly fancier in recent years (far end).

The boys enjoyed sitting in the bobsled...

...and checking out the luge...

The collection of medals was impressive, and who knew that they've also given participation medals since the beginning!

It was soon time to head back upstairs for our tour of the facility, but this post is already way too long, so we're going to break here.  Stay tuned!

Party Time!

We had a very busy week last week, mostly because we had so much to do to get ready for Jacob's party.  As you'll recall, last year we had so much going on all summer that Jacob's party ended up being in October, which is pretty much unacceptable, but was essentially unavoidable if we wanted any shot of getting a reasonable amount of family here.  Most of June was overtaken by lacrosse, and between family reunions, two bridal showers, one baby shower, two weddings, one baptism, and the cousins' sports schedules, there were simply no weekends where we could have pulled it off with any reasonable amount of attendance.  And with his hoop finally in his possession, all he dreamed about was being able to play basketball with his cousins.  So we finally got around to it in October.

Clearly that was going to be unacceptable this year, so we did everything we could to get it as close to his birthday as possible.  The weekend after ended up not working out, but this weekend--Saturday specifically--looked good all around, so we locked it in!  The only problem is that this week was my crazy week at work prior to the end of the fiscal year on June 30, and time off was generally frowned upon.  I took a half day for the last day of school, and that was all I could really risk.  But having the party on Saturday meant that our prep time would be minimal.  I set the party time at 3:00 to give us max time that day, but given that our anniversary was Friday and my parents were nice enough to stick around after watching Carter on Friday so we could go out to dinner alone, we didn't have a lot of time Friday night either.  But last weekend I did a ton of yard work and some dusting, and over the course of the week Craig did a lot in the yard, too.  It was a constant struggle all week to keep the house picked up, especially because of the avalanche of year-end stuff coming home from school.  I shopped on Thursday and picked up some final cake decorating stuff on Friday at lunch.  I finally did some final bathroom cleaning and vacuuming on Saturday, along with cake decorating, after staying up late enough Friday to get both layers baked and start on early assembly.  It was a struggle, but I kept telling myself it's always worth it to have family time!

As for the cake...Originally we were considering a Raptors' jersey, but then when they won the championship I figured, "How often do you get to integrate your team's championship trophy into your cake design?"  Usually it's pretty rare (Knighthawks and Golden State Warriors aside), so I started hatching a plan.  Of course, Pinterest was absolutely no help this time, so I was really on my own.  The plan had a lot of challenges.  First, red frosting.  Making red frosting is nearly impossible.  I did it for Carter's Spider-man cake, but it was nearly impossible and it still looked a little pink.  After some Googling, I determined that Super Walmarts stocked cans of red Wilton frosting.  Of course, when I went to Walmart on Friday, it took me multiple tries to find it.  Not in the grocery baking section, not in the craft section, and not in the cake pan section.  I finally found it in the party supply section.  Second issue, gold trophy.  Aside from playing around with red and yellow food coloring to find the perfect mustard yellowish color, I wasn't sure what to do.  But then I found gold sprinkles in bulk at Joann, and found gold "color mist" in stock at Walmart, and figured between those two things we could create a gold trophy.  It would be a bit of an artsy take, but Jacob was on board.  Issue three, visual interest.  I was not going to try to build a trophy out of cake (gluten-free cake isn't trustworthy), or cut the cake (too much waste), or use fondant (just nope), so I wanted to think of something interesting to do with the cake.  The sprinkles would help, but when I realized I could bake a small portion to make the ball look round, that worked for me!  The end result wasn't quite as attractive as I would have hoped, but Jacob still liked it!

He originally didn't want his age on it (but I wanted it so it was easier to know which year I did it), so we compromised by paying tribute to his favorite players on the back of the cake!

The biggest challenges were the sprinkles and spray being completely impossible to work with.  The sprinkles rolled all over the place, and the spray was very hard to aim properly.  Too far out and it sprayed too wide and too light, too close and it wasn't even.  I also forgot to draw the lines on the ball and net before I did the first round of sprinkles.  Eventually I gave up on fixing the rogue sprinkles and spread them all over the cake like confetti.  In retrospect at that point I should have taken the shaker top off the sprinkles and just dumped and spread them, but I didn't want to make anything worse and it didn't occur to me until later.  Putting them on the ball was nearly impossible.  But I did rock getting side-by-side different colors of frosting without doing one color or another as a full crumb coat, so that was cool to figure out.

We ended up with a beautiful day for the party.  Around 80 and sunny, with a pleasant breeze.  And even better, we finally got the pool to a reasonably swimmable point.  It's not really clear, but it's clean and blue and warm.  Carter and my mom swam for hours on Friday and the kids had a blast in it yesterday, too.  We had a pretty limited crew for various reasons (my dad's family has a lot going on, and the teenage cousins had other plans), but we had a very nice group.

One funny little oddity from the day was that the house two doors down was hosting a wedding!  We could just see the ceremony from our yard...

They had a nice tent set up over their patio/deck that looked pretty at night with lights on, and they recently constructed some sort of shed/cabana so maybe that played a part as well.  It didn't last too long into the evening, though.  But it was funny to see them and hear the applause at the end!

True to this birthday so far, Jacob only had one gift to open.  He got some nice cash in his cards, which was good, but I think he was in the mood for real gifts!  We tried to explain he's tough to buy for, but whatever.  He did get a cool retro Raptors shirt, though!

We had a delicious meal and Jacob was very eager to get to his cake!

Yummy as usual!  After cake, the kids swam and the adults enjoyed the pleasant evening.  It's amazing how quickly the day goes when you're busy preparing and getting dinner up and running!  Everyone left by around 8:00, I think, and then I had about an hour of cleanup (mostly dishes).  It was still pretty light out at 9:15, and the boys were all settled in watching a movie, so I ran out to the pool for about 20 minutes of solo swimming.  I was afraid it might be too cool, but the water felt good pretty quickly and the bugs took a while to find me.  It was so peaceful.  Not as many fireflies as usual, but very nice.  It was a very busy couple days, so it was nice to get a few minutes to chill--even if every part of my body was completely exhausted!  Floating felt good, at least!

We were hoping for a fun family day of some sort today, but that got derailed by the unfortunate discovery of the disappearance of my work laptop.  We accidentally left the garage door open last night (since we were focused on the backyard) and I must have accidentally left my laptop on my car floor on Friday (it blends in to the carpet in a dark garage).  It was nowhere to be found when I went to do work this afternoon, and I even drove into work to make sure I didn't somehow leave it there.  The only other thing that appeared to be disturbed was the change in Craig's van, so it's possible it was just a quick job.  Lessens your faith in humanity, doesn't it?  It also took forever to hear from one of my bosses, so needless to say, I was not in a great mood today.  I'll hopefully feel better after figuring things out a bit more tomorrow.  The cops are on it, but most likely it won't amount to anything unless they're stupid enough to pawn it.  Sh**.

So, onward to a new week.  Apparently my two days at work won't be as productive as planned.  Carter starts camp #1 tomorrow, and is super excited to see his bestie.  We still have a trip to plan, starting as early as Wednesday, that will culminate in Watertown next weekend for our last lacrosse tournament.  Those plans will apparently be a little last-minute...or a lot.  We have thoughts, but will probably be relying on Hotwire or Priceline to do hotels as cheap as possible.  Probably will be a bit of a disaster, but we'll see!  I'm probably most annoyed that a weekend that started out great ended up so crappy.  Summer's too short to be grumpy. 😭

School's Out for Summer!

After at least a month of watching other people's kids finish school via Facebook and about three days of local friends posting their year-end pictures, on Wednesday our district finally finished up.  Jacob and Carter are done for the year!

For your entertainment, here are the before and after porch photos...

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

They're both definitely taller! Presumably they've learned a ton and become better people.  They both had great teachers.  Jacob wasn't sure about his at the beginning of the year (as usual), but once he got used to his sense of humor (and realized he hit the jackpot with very little homework), he loved his teacher.  Carter had a bit of an up-and-down year, but I think his teacher was a great fit and his report card was mostly good--just a couple things to work on.  Jacob's was probably his best yet academically, with maybe one thing he needs improvement in.

In true mom fashion I snapped a picture of Jacob walking into elementary school for the last time.  Next year is going to be a complete change--early wakeups for him taking the bus, a bigger school, new friends, a different class setup, uniforms, and so much more--so I'm trying to savor our last bit of normalcy before all of that comes flying at us in the fall. 

I actually got a little emotional in the car after this as I drove to work, because I started thinking about his first day of Kindergarten and where we were at emotionally the day we sent him off on the bus for the first time.

It was such a difficult phase for us, possibly the hardest time of my life, as he was in the early stages of his meltdowns and we just didn't know what was going on with him.  We were a mere couple weeks away from the out-of-the-blue, probable Celiac diagnosis--and oh yeah, Carter was showing signs of a rice intolerance at that point, so I was just a giant mess all around.  I felt like everything was spiraling out of control, and on top of it I had to send my kid off to school.  Thank God he'd already been in daycare for years, because the physical separation and socialization weren't really an issue like they would be for some parents, but knowing I was sending my kid with serious behavioral concerns into a new classroom setting, where there would be pressure on him to learn at a pace he was unaccustomed to, was absolutely terrifying.  Not all of my concerns were unjustified, clearly, as we had a very tumultuous year, but it really struck me Wednesday that his last day of elementary school sort of bookended a very difficult period for us.  Things are still hard, in different ways, but certainly not as traumatic as they were then.  Whether that's because things have calmed down or because we just got used to the challenge, I'm honestly not sure.  Probably a little of both, if I'm being honest. Kindergarten really did mark the "official" beginning to a lot of the challenges we've faced, if only because teacher concerns drove us to start evaluations to actually determine what was up.  We actually started therapy prior to school, out of sheer desperation, but hearing other people have so many concerns (as the daycare staff never really raised alarm--they just knew him and "got" him) really solidified the battle we had to fight.  Almost six years later, we've been through three different rounds of therapy, three years of medication, and way too many sibling battles to count.  Through it all Jacob has continued to do well academically, and by all indications he's just a regular kid...so I guess that should be counted as a win, right?  Regardless, we've come a long way, and Wednesday really brought that into focus.

So, now summer has begun.  Finally.  The weather was late, the end of school was late, and suddenly the kids are done, it's 87 degrees out, and the 4th of July is less than a week away.  And oh, we have vacation next week and haven't planned it yet.  Probably no passport, so it appears it will be stateside somewhere.  Jacob started camp yesterday, and Carter starts back at his old daycare on Monday.  One less lunch to pack for the next 10 weeks, and one added passenger for my daily commute.  Our new normal starts now.  We don't have a lot of plans, but hopefully we'll have a great summer nonetheless!

Ladies' Night

As you may recall, last month when Craig and I had our night out with his family to the fundraiser gala, I won two tickets to the Mixtape Tour concert in Buffalo.  The headliner was NKOTB, but I was more excited about the other acts--Debbie Gibson, Tiffany, Salt-N-Pepa, and Naughty by Nature.  It's the perfect lineup for someone my age, as all of those acts peaked anywhere from the late 80s to the early 90s, right in the middle of my impressionable pre-teen years.  I figured out pretty quickly that Craig probably wouldn't have much interest in going, and after much consideration about who to take (I have many friends who were big NKOTB fans back in the day--how to pick?), I was thrilled when my sister-in-law Andrea was able to work it out to go.  We don't get to spend much time alone together, but we do have fun so I thought it would be a good excuse for a moms' night out!

After spending the afternoon with Jacob, I headed out to Buffalo, battled a ton of traffic, and finally met up with Andrea.  We headed downtown together.  Luckily it was a beautiful night so the walk from the parking lot in was perfect.  I even ran into two high school friends, which was nice!  We got inside, grabbed some food and a beverage, and eventually settled into our seats, which were awesome!  The first thing that struck me as we walked through the arena was that 95% of the crowd looked to be middle age women.  That wasn't surprising, but actually seeing it in person was striking.  The second thing that struck me is that the male significant others that tagged along were very brave indeed.

The concert began with a DJ tandem that remixed a bunch of 80s tunes and had the whole crowd singing along.  It was a little weird that the DJ had a bear costume on, but whatever...

Despite being the headliner, NKOTB came out first.  Like I said, I wasn't a huge NKOTB fan.  I had friends who were, so of course I knew their music, but I was never a fanatic.  The opening video showed a bedroom that I have a feeling many of the concert attendees could relate to--pink walls and NKOTB bedding--which I know at least one of my friends had!  I listened to them on the radio and no doubt watched some videos on MTV, and I definitely thought Joey McIntyre was the cutest, but that's about where it ended.  Still, I was looking forward to seeing them perform, almost as if it was a bucket list item I never knew I had!  I guess I'll just chalk it up to always being eager for a new experience!

I know I shouldn't have been surprised, but seeing them up there doing all of the same coordinated moves was...weird?  I get that boy bands are supposed to appeal to teenage girls with their good looks, smooth moves, and sweet voices, but what happens when those teenage girls grow up?  Apparently not much.  Women still screamed like teenagers.  NKOTB did an uncomfortable number of pelvic thrusts and gyrations.  They still made love to the camera.  They still made anyone they interacted with swoon.  But it was odd.  I mean, most (all?) of them are married, and one is gay, for Pete's sake.  I found myself laughing and shaking my head most of the time because some of it felt really ridiculous, but I'll admit that for pushing 50, they still had it.  Mostly, anyway.  Joey and Jordan could still sing like crazy, and the dance moves were good.  They were certainly entertaining, at the very least!

Joey

Donnie

My favorite part of the set was how the stage looked like a cassette tape, and usually they'd show the name of the current song on the bottom of the cassette, or sometimes just the performer's name.  Here's what it looked like for "Favorite Girl"...

They kept things interesting out in the crowd with confetti drops, streamer cannons, and a cell phone app that used phone flash lights to coordinate with the music or the mood.

Confetti!

Like I said, our seats were awesome!  I used the zoom but this is basically the view we had.

Does Jon Knight find it weird to sing about girls now?

The coolest part of the concert was that it was constant action.  Because there were two stages, it was easy for them to shift between acts seamlessly.  There was also a lot of crowd interaction because the performers could go out into the crowd to move between stages.  At one point the New Kids ended up on the small stage and up popped Tiffany on the main stage!  Seeing her sing the iconic "I Think We're Alone Now" was pretty cool.  She looked a little different and her voice might have deepened a bit, but she still had it!

Next up was Debbie Gibson, who was probably who I was most excited about!  I loved Debbie when I was a kid!  Heck, we even shared a birthday!  My Uncle Mark was actually a huge fan of hers, and I spent a good chunk of my early teenage years borrowing her CDs from him, including a long time after most people stopped listening to her!  Considering she's pushing 50, she looked pretty darn great!

Still has the hat...and such a fun dress!

The little stage was cool--it raised up, almost like a UFO, complete with exhaust!

Seeing Debbie was a thrill.  I never would have dreamed I'd have the chance to see her (or any of these folks, actually), but 30 years later, here we were!

Next up was Salt-N-Pepa!  I almost forgot how many good songs they had--Shoop, Whatta Man, Let's Talk About Sex, and of course, the one I have on my iPod, Push It!  They definitely still had it, as well.  They looked, moved, and sounded great!

NKOTB came out again, and this time did a bunch of crowd interaction--first from the small stage...

Then walking through the actual crowd.  They all ended up in a different section.  Donnie was particularly memorable as he kept taking people's beer and drinking it!  Between that and the gratuitous F-bombs, it was clear this wasn't a teeny bopper show any longer!

At one point they sand the song "Boys in the Band", which was a new release a couple years back with an absolutely hilarious video full of cameos.  Since it had a high school theme, I guess it made sense to have cheerleaders, which happened to be the Buffalo Bandettes, the Bandits' cheerleaders.  Good for them, eh?

Oh, and Donnie also liked to show off his muscles.  He ripped off his tank for this one.

Good for him?

I really only knew a couple Naughty by Nature songs, but "O.P.P." and "Hip Hop Hooray" were serious staples of my youth, so it was fun to see.  They had a ton of energy!

Incidentally, earlier in the day when Jacob asked me about the concert, I told him a little bit about it and he asked if there was any hip hop (his current preference).  I shared that, yes, there was some!  I played "Push It" for him from my phone, to which he sort of winced.  Then I pulled up "O.P.P.", and he nodded his head a bit, as if that was "real" enough hip hop for him.  The whole conversation cracked me up.

I was excited when Debbie came back out, particularly since she was with her piano.  "Foolish Beat" was cool enough...

...but the whole crowd went nuts when "Lost in Your Eyes" started.  And when Joey McIntyre came out to do it as a duet, it was pretty freaking cool!

My other highlight was seeing "Push It" live.  It was so awesome.  It's one of my running songs sometimes, so it's still near and dear to me, and seeing it like this was amazing!

At the end of the concert, NKOTB came out in bedazzled Bruins jerseys (daring in Buffalo!) and then were joined by everyone else.  It was quite a finale!

It was really a super fun show!  You know how life seemed simpler back then?  That was sort of the feeling I had during this concert.  The music was a throwback to a simpler time and made me miss that era even more.  Were the performances the best ever?  Not even close.  For being 30 years past their prime, everyone did great.  But certain performers were certainly not the same, and sometimes (like with those pelvic thrusts or the overly dramatic pauses during a couple NKOTB songs) it felt a little staged or forced.  But you know, none of that really mattered because it was just so fun!  Most of the crowd was there openly admitting to having been a crazy, teeny bopper fan 30 years ago, and I guess that just made it a safe place to let loose and unapologetically sing and dance like a bunch of kids.  It just made me smile!  I couldn't help but wonder, though, if there were moments during the show that the artists think to themselves, "I'm too stinking old for this!"  Or, with all of those dance moves, if they all get together after the show and distribute the Aleve to ease their aching bodies!  I guess we've all officially grown up!  

I'm so happy that I took a chance and bid on the tickets.  It was a fun night out with good company, and now I can always say I've seen all of these artists live!  If you would have told me 30 years ago that I'd be seeing any of them in concert as a full-blown grown-up, I'd have thought you were nuts.  But what a crazy, fun night it was!