Fun Weekend

So the weekend is over!  I had something planned for each day and it felt good to get out of the house and away from all the crazy. 

I had found out a while ago that the band Barenaked Ladies was coming to Fredericksburg August 19 (Friday), and since they are pretty much my favorite band ever, I was definitely going to go.  I had seen them once before up in Fairfax with my sister and my friend Heather and so I asked them if they’d like to go and they said yes, so we got tickets!  When I found out Kristin was coming, I asked her if she wanted to go.  She had never heard of BNL, but also said she’d never been to a concert before, so she thought it would be fun.  We had paid for “premium seats”.  I had thought we should go early since the seating is first come first served in the “premium” section, but then I just decided to relax and as my sister got stuck in traffic, it was just as well—she didn’t make it till 4 and she left Alexandria at noon.

We decided to have dinner first, and went over to Buffalo Wild Wings so Kristin could experience buffalo wings for the first time.  So she opted for a burger! hahaha  But she did try corn dogs too. :-)  Through that dinner, I learned she does not like onions or honey mustard, important information!

At around 5:30, we drove over to Celebrate Virginia Live—it turns out it’s just a field next to Wegman’s and when they’re having a concert, they put up a stage and call it a pavilion!  Go figure.  We got our tickets, no problem, and then went into the seating area, which was pretty much empty!  Yahoo!  We got seats in the third row, dead center.  I was in HEAVEN!  I’ve been pretty close in other concerts before (5th row for Eric Idle, 7th row for Meatloaf), but this was TOPS!  There was time before the opening act, Jukebox the Ghost, came on, so we just sorta sat around and didn’t do much. 

The opening act was pretty decent, I must say, and I have a history of seeing crappy opening acts for bands, so it’s a serious plus for me that I didn’t dislike those guys.  It started to rain a bit, which kind of sucked, but also gave a kind of Woodstock-esque atmosphere to the whole thing.  I walked around a bit and found some friends in the back, slogged through the mud, and Heather bought Kristin cotton candy.  Then it was finally time!

BNL took the stage pretty much right on time, and they were great.  Despite losing one of their lead singers a couple years ago, I really think they sounded amazing and the concert was great.  We were on our feet the whole time, dancing and singing, and I got tons of pictures and videos, and just LOVED it. 

  By the time it was done, Judy couldn’t even talk.  Kristin declared us “a little” nerdy.  Hahaha

Saturday, was party night.  At Penny’s goodbye party in June, I had a few of my friends over with whom she had gotten close, and I said when our exchange was over, I needed to go out with my peeps and get a drink.  So we got to planning and decided to have a slumber party the weekend before my birthday, which is tomorrow.  Well, surprise!  Kristin arrived, so sleeping over was not an option due to space, but we decided to party at my friend, Melissa’s house.  We went up there at 6pm and had a really nice chat the whole way up.  We got up there in time to see the end of Shaun of the Dead, eat pizza, and discuss our plans for the night, and decided to go play laser tag, something that Kristin really enjoys and the one time I’ve played, I hate.  (I’m too much of a pacifist to hide in dark places and pretend to shoot people.)

Kristin’s first pack didn’t work very well, but she still did quite well, much better than I did!  We played a second game and she killed me a ton of times!  It was crazy.  My friend Emily and I tried to form a team and get each other’s backs, and it worked pretty well in the second game, so that was good.  It was fun and Kristin laughed a lot, so that made me happy!

We went back to Melissa’s and sang karaoke, although Kristin staunchly refused, saying she doesn’t sing (she must not have been listening—none of us do!).  Afterwards, we decided to play a game called “paper telephone”.  It’s a lot like the game telephone in which you whisper things around the circle and see what comes back, only in paper telephone, you start by writing something down on a piece of paper, the next person draws a picture of what you’ve written, the next person writes down what they see in the drawing, and so on.  We played that probably 8-10 times and it was hilarious.  Culture only played into it once when Kristin got “sloppy joes” and didn’t know what they were.  But let me tell you, drawing what Andy deemed “A cowboy wrestling a gingerbread man” was a real challenge!

We got home around 3AM and while we were gone, the toilet that caused the destruction in the house had coughed up a “hairball”—basically a giant brick of sludge, so I wound up cleaning that until 3:30 and for some reason, couldn’t sleep past 7:30 that morning.  We left at 10AM on Sunday to go up to Judy’s.  There is a local water park for kids called the SprayGround—basically a pile of fountains and water tables that you can run through.  It is closing this week, so I wanted to go one more time, although frankly I like it much more than Leah does.  We got in a bit of a splash war with Kristin, which was fun and afterwards went to Fuddruckers for dinner.

We got home and Kristin went on Skype with her parents and even got Leah on camera and showed her her dogs, and then I put Leah to bed.  Kristin came down and said she was going to go up to her room and watch a movie.  Then she kind of looked at me sideways and said, “Unless you wanna watch it with me?”  Of course I did!  So I made some popcorn and we watched Kung Fu Panda, which is one of her favorite movies, apparently and was cute!!!  I took a shower and got to thinking about the fact that this week is pretty busy but next week is EMPTY and how I really didn’t want to sit around and do nothing for another week, so we all talked and we are thinking about going up to Mike's family’s house in Rhode Island.  It will depend on if his parents will have us and if he can get the time off work, but since we really don’t know what will happen, it’ll be nice to go and take at least one trip with Kristin before she possibly moves out.  NY and Philadelphia are quick and easy day trips that I can make in September or October, but it’ll be a good thing to see New England a bit as well.

So that’s it for our big weekend!  Today Kristin is going to lunch and shopping with our neighbor’s daughter, Katie.  Tomorrow is my birthday and since I”m kind of depressed about it, I’m just going to do normal things like take Leah to Toddlin’ Time and take Kristin to her school registration appointment.  Wednesday we are going out to Luray Caverns and Friday I am putting together a little party to welcome Kristin to the area with some kids from the high school.  Not sure what we’ll do next weekend, although my sister and I have to get together to make invitations for my dad’s 60th at the end of September.

So that’s all the news that’s fit to print!  Progress is being made in transforming us into a family, not just a host family.  It makes me happy, each baby step.