What the boys don't know...

Last night after the boys went to sleep, Jim & I snuck out to a concert at the Beachland Ballroom. It happened against all odds, but with much help, happen it did, and the boys are none the wiser...

It all started in the morning when I randomly happened across the news that Mike Gordon, formerly of Phish (a band some of you may know we are quite fond of), was going to be playing at the Beachland Ballroom that night. Mostly in passing I thought "man, if only we could find someone to watch the boys...." then went on with my day. When Jim came home, I mentioned it and again said "if only..." We went about getting dinner ready and as we sat at the table eating, we looked across the street to our neighbor Brenda's house and thought "hmmmm......" Brenda is great and has offered many times to watch the boys if need be, and she lives right across the street... So we decided to give her a call - couldn't hurt to ask, right? And amazingly, about 2.5 hours before we'd need to leave, she said yes! We had a babysitter!

The next hurdle came when I got online to find directions and try to buy tickets. The time to buy tickets online had passed. So had the time to buy them over the phone, and the guy I talked to said there were only about 100 left... We would never make it if we were to wait until after the boys were asleep. But we were not willing to give up, having had the great fortune to find a babysitter on such short notice. So Jim gave Christine in Euclid a call to see if by chance she would be able to do the huge favor of swinging by the Ballroom to pick up some tickets. And she was! We got a call as were were getting the boys changed for bed that she had been successful. Everything was falling into place.

But then. In order to get there before the show started, we needed to put the boys to bed a little earlier than usual. So we ran them ragged between dinner and bed in hopes that they'd just fall right asleep the instant their heads hit the pillow...... Not quite. I don't know how, but they seem to have radar that senses when we need things to go a certain way, and an innate desire to foil our plans. It was a rough hour full of crying boys and wondering why we even try to do new things. But finally, quiet. Brenda came over and we were off.

We got there between the opening act and Mike Gordon coming on, and he played straight through, with the final song finishing at 12:30 - just enough time to slip out before the encore and get home just a few minutes late. It was a great concert - amazing music. And a little piece of "us" from before the boys were here. To make it that much better, we got back to a little bit cleaner house and the relief of hearing that the boys had slept straight through, not a peep out of them.

So maybe next time, when things are seeming impossible, we'll remember this and take heart. Maybe. We'll try. If nothing else, we got to enjoy a great concert together, and that is good.

Now, lest we go two postings without new pictures of the boys, here is a semi-recent one of the boys' first experience with bubbles... and the sidebar photos have been updated as well.