Wonderful Night!

Steve and I went out for a date tonight and we had a great time. I picked up our sitter right after school, hurried to get ready and then went to meet Steve at work. (He lives halfway between our house and W'loo, where we were going.)

First, we went out to dinner. Something we NEVER do alone anymore. Or, for that matter, rarely as a family at a sit-down restaurant. Have you tried eating at a sit down restaurant with three toddlers recently?? Exactly. So we went to Carlos O'Kelley's. I wasn't sure if my stomach was up to it or not, but it turned out wonderful...with the help of several Tums.

Then, we went to a concert we had been looking forward to for months. We bought the tickets back in January for Kutless, one of our favorite groups. We even "splurged" and got Gold Circle tickets, which are the first 10 rows. It's still general admission seating, but you are guaranteed to get a little closer and center seating. We got there early enough that we got in the third row! Yay! We would have gotten closer, but they were having some confusion about the internet sales, so we ended up switching lines a few times prior to getting it figured out. That was fine by us, but some people got ticked. I guess that I am always surprised by people's behavior when you are attending a Christian event. But, we all know, we are still human. Just cut others a little slack, OK?

They had two new people open for them. Chris Taylor, who was just awesome. He truly was acoustic, just him and his guitar. The next was a new group called Esterlyn. They were awesome as well. I would probably explain them as a little closer to punk rock, but they classify themselves as indie rock. Either way, they were really good. I will definitely be buying both Chris Taylor's and Esterlyn's new CDs.

Then Kutless came out. Mind you, this is their "acoustic" tour, so I was expecting a few acoustic guitars and that's about it. Not so. It was very close to a "normal" concert. I didn't see much "acoustic" about it, but LOVED every second of it. They were definitely plugged in. However, they do say on their website that it is a "more intimate" concert (and it was) and apparently the drummer uses a different type of drumstick. They spent a lot of time discussing things with the audience. Which is fairly common in at least the Christian concerts Steve and I have gone to. None of them (this is our first acoustic concert) have just come out, played a set, and then been done. There is a lot more interaction, which I love. It seems you get to "know" the personality of the band and it's members a little more. But from what the members of Kutless said, I'm not sure they do a lot of "talking" in their regular, plugged in, concerts.

I did get some videos, but we were in the third row and right in front of a small speaker, which means that they didn't turn out too fantastic. However, I am still going to post them on the dropshots site (www.dropshots.com/5boysmom). I will post our pictures from the night here.

I love getting out with my husband for one on one time and this was awesome. The last concert we went to was Go Fish, with the boys, and while I loved that, it is fun to do this with just us. The last concert we went to alone was Third Day and that was when I was pregnant with Aidan. That night, because we only had one child and it wasn't a school night, we even stayed in a hotel and drove quite a while to get there. (It was in Madison.) For a sampling of Kutless' music, you are listening to it on my playlist at the bottom of the page. It was actually even better in person...

Some pictures turned out better than others (finally, towards the end I realized if I turned OFF my flash, the pictures would be better...duh!), but here they are:

Chris Taylor:

Esterlyn:

Jon Micah Sumrall (lead singer - Kutless) discussing World Vision prior to set:

Jon Micah singing:James Mead (guitar front) and Dave "Lucky" Luetkenhoelter (guitar back):Kutless (Jon Micah Sumrall, Nick Departee (guitar stage right), Jeff Gilbert (drums), James Mead, Dave "Lucky" Luetkenhoelter: