Saturday with Swift

Saturday turned out to be quite a great day. This is sort of amazing because the forces seemed to be working against us most of the time. Early Saturday morning, B informed me that he was watching some Taylor Swift tickets on eBay. The concert was that night and he thought Savannah would like to go. But the price kept climbing and climbing. So, the eBay tickets didn’t work out. (Evil forces 1, Us 0) But, I tried our luck with Ticketmaster and after about 587 attempts, I scored some great main floor tickets. (Evil forces 1, Us 1) So, Savannah and I had plans for the evening. Woo hoo! But first, we had the Washington County Fair Parade.
The parade is second only to Halloween in the amount of candy loot the kids haul in. They look forward to it all year long and when the day finally arrives, it is full of candy catching preparation. Our chairs are placed out by the curb very early in the day to reserve our spots. The plastic shopping sacks are all inspected and only the sacks that are largest in size and strength are brought out to hold the precious loot. The kids will check the windows approximately every 30 seconds to make sure no one is coming along to attempt to steal our spots.
I went into the house just before the end of the parade to tend to my roasting chickens and some cheerleaders came by with super-soakers along with one girl equipped with a bucket of water. From what I’m told, she had set her sights on Myles and intended to soak him (ha ha), but had incredibly bad aim and instead soaked Savannah and as a result filled her candy bag with water. (Evil forces 2, Us 1) After a few tears and many paper towels. The candy was salvaged as was the soaked outfit. (Take that evil forces).

We scarfed down some chicken and hit the road. On the way downtown, we heard on the radio that a downtown bar was offering free limousine rides to the Qwest center. They had free parking and would drop us off at the front door. Yipee! So, we circled around and around (damn one-way roads) until we found the place. I parked and we rushed up to the crowd standing outside this bar. "Can we take the limo to the Qwest?" I asked. I wasn't sure if this was a drinking ride and required everyone to be 21 or not. "Oh, you just missed it," I was informed by a burly security guard. "Are they coming back? Can we take the next one?" Nope. There was only one shot and we had missed it by exactly one minute. (Evil forces 3, Us 1) So, we got back into the car and headed toward the awaiting Taylor Swift. Except there is no parking at the Qwest Center. None. And it's starting to drizzle.

We parked about 8 blocks away, hiked in the rain with nothing over our heads but my stretched sweater, and arrived at the Qwest Center about 30 minutes into the show. Thankfully there were 2 opening acts. Once we were inside, Savannah was excited. She definitely wanted to get a tshirt and we waited in that line for another 30 minutes or so. But, she was thrilled with her shirt and promptly put it on over her dress.

Crowds of people started pouring out toward the concession stands, and I took that as our queue to find our seats. Main floor row 16. (That's right, baby. Row 16!!) We walked way up to nearly the front to find row 16 and couldn't figure out which seats were ours. After climbing over the laps of several people numerous times in a very un-fun game of musical chairs, we finally figured out that two women were in our seats and kept sending us off in other directions in an attempt to keep our seats. We sent them packing.
Then the lights went down and Taylor Swift came out. Savannah spent the entire concert standing on her chair and could see the whole thing really well. She had a blast. So far this summer has included her first Broadway show (Wicked) and her first concert.

Taylor put on a great show. She even performed a couple of songs out in the crowd at the back of the arena. (I love when this happens because that's usually where my seats are. This time, however, those were the parts we couldn't see very well) At the end of the show, Kelly Pickler and another girl came up with a big sign stating that Taylor had just won 2 teen choice awards. And then Taylor performed a song with Kelly Pickler and Gloriana. (We missed both of those acts due to lack of parking and huge tshirt lines, so it was nice to see a little of them)

Here's some of my 280+ pictures from the show.

See? Always a weirdo. This particular weirdo was under the delusion that Taylor wanted to see his bared flabby belly.


The girl can belt out a tune!

Savannah was getting into it. Confetti was shot out over our heads just moments later. Of course, I couldn't get a good shot of that!

Taylor stood under a waterfall at the end of the show. She was only slightly wetter than Savannah and I were after hiking into the show.

In the end, the evil forces still lost because we saw Taylor Swift and had a great time. On the walk back to our car, Savannah wanted to know when she'd be back because she wants to go again.

The next night, the kids and I hung out watching the teen choice awards on TV. We got to see the awards Taylor won.