Summer of Fun

In all of my bragging about our little Ashlyn, I forget to talk about some of the fun stuff Derek and I have been up to, so here goes...

For those who don't know, Derek is a carpet salesman and he travels all around the valley visiting accounts & trying to get flooring stores to buy his products. One account is owned by a couple and the husband is also a tour assistant for Eric Clapton. We were able to score free tickets and what we thought were backstage passes to possibly meet the band when they came to Phoenix in June. I know what you're thinking, and No, we are not big fans. But come on, wouldn't you go if you were offered free concert tickets and passes?

We only knew a few songs, so we looked up the bios and play lists for he and tour mate Steve Winwood. We started to get more excited as we recognized a few more songs and were mostly looking forward to the whole "Backstage Experience". Thanks to our great neighbors, we had a babysitter for the night and we were off!

We arrived, got our tickets, and instead of a pass we each got a sticker that said "Guest". We were guided to our special entrance and just as we could see the arena through the curtains, we were pointed to the plain ol' door on our left. Inside this special guest room lined with beige cinder block, were a bunch of other people with the same disappointed look on their face. Although they were dealing a bit better than us with the reality that we were not going to meet the legendary rocker because there was all the free beer you could want. Of course we don't drink and they were out of water, so I grabbed a sprite and we went to our seats. The concert itself was pretty boring & they only played 3 recognizable songs. I shouldn't complain though, the seats were fantastic and we still felt a little special with our stickers sitting in the friends & family section. We left before the encore and beat the traffic out. Even though it didn't turn out like we'd hoped, we still had a fun date night.

We've found a great way to be able to see the new release movies and not have to hire a babysitter...

There is a Drive-In movie theater in Scottsdale/Tempe that is open year round. On a whim the weekend before last, we decided to go. We really wanted to see Transformers and it was playing second in a double feature with Ice Age. It worked out perfectly....we all watched the first movie and Ashlyn slept in her car seat for the second. It was so much fun! It's so stinkin' hot that there's no relief to roll down the windows so we had to keep turning the AC on to cool off. We'll definitely do it again, maybe just wait a couple months till it's not so hot out.

The next day, Derek and I had tickets to go see Wicked. We've been wanting to see it for years (I'm so lucky I have a husband that enjoys the theater too!) and when we found out it was coming, we bought balcony tickets & gave them to each other for Mother's & Father's Day. We knew we were getting cheap tickets, we just didn't realize it was the very last row possible of the theater. The Gammage is bigger and taller than the Capital & those on Broadway. It wasn't so bad once the play started and we got into it, the problem is that Derek has vertigo and got a bit nervous with how far up we were. Highly recommended (the play that is)....it was great!

Now you know I'm not going to let a blog go by that I don't talk about Ashlyn. She LOVES books and I'm thrilled that she's responding more, babbling lots like she is talking to us in comprehensive sentences, and she's recognizing animals/sounds, etc. Here's a dark video we took of her the other night and a few more pics:

Have a Fabulous Day!