A rainy Saturday night with Alan Jackson

Hey friends! I hope you all had a wonderful weekend!

Saturday night we took the kids to the Alan Jackson concert in Birmingham. Jameson is crazy about Alan Jackson (as is the rest of the family), and was thrilled to finally get to see him in concert.

There was a lot of speculation whether the concert would go on as planned. The death of George Jones, a close friend of Alan's, led several of Alan's fans wondering if he would be able to perform. There was also the issue of rain and storms. The venue is outdoors, with zero shelter (except for the stage!  LOL).  The forecast remained iffy all week and into Saturday, but we decided to go for it and see what happened.

We were super excited that I finally figured out how to link my iTunes on my phone, through my car radio. We were asking the kids what they wanted to hear, and then turned around to find this:

 

Don't you just love Chelsea's baby?

Everyone had their earplugs in, listening to their own music. HAHA!

We were really early, so we decided to stop at one of our favorite places to eat:

 We ate until we couldn't eat any more, and then headed out to the concert.

I will say, preferred parking is A#1! We were literally 50 yards from the gate! Well worth the money we spent (which was cheaper than a lot of the "event parking" places we saw!)  They were holding the state fair at the same time, so 75% of the event parking was taken up with that! Who in their right mind thought that would be a good idea?

Jameson is excited about seeing "his favorite country music singer ever!"

We only had to wait about 30 minutes to get in, but once inside, we had to pull out these:

It's never good when you have to pull out the ponchos!

The rain was very light, but we were worried about what was headed our way:

The blue circle is our location.

Well, we made the mistake of saying something about the weather and looking at the radar.  So Jameson, who is TERRIFIED of bad weather, started getting upset.  We attempted to keep him calm by playing around.

We kept watching the radar, and were very happy to see that it looked like the storms that were headed our way were weakening.

And we even started to see a little sunshine peeking through the clouds:

By the time the concert got into full swing, we were thrilled to see the storms had missed us completely!

Tate Stevens, the winner of X-Factor last year, opened for Alan:

 He was really good and sang a mixture of great songs!

Well, about this time, Jameson was still freaked out about the weather, and suddenly started feeling like he was going to throw-up. Marty got up and went out with him (per Jameson's request), while Chelsea and I stayed put.

I know you probably think I am a horrible mother for not getting up and running out with him, but this is pretty common for Jameson (he gets anxious and then feels like he's going to be sick). So I waited with Chelsea until we knew if this was sick-sick, or anxiety sick.

After several minutes, Jameson felt better and they came back in.  Just in time to see Alan come out on stage.  

 Things were very quiet and somber when he came out on stage. There was no big introduction, no big fanfare.  Just Mr. Jackson walking onto the stage, guitar in hand, walking over to a stool.  Immediately, you hear the music, and he starts singing George Jones' "He stopped loving her today" as a slideshow of photos of George and Alan played in the background.

HERE is the video of that heartfelt performance.

The link is the "official" video, the YouTube video is fan footage. The "link" is much better and you can see the photos better. (For some reason, Blogger won't let me find the official video) 

Very touching and there were very few dry eyes in the audience!  The rest of the concert was great, but Jameson and Marty kept leaving because he felt sick.  Finally, Chelsea and I got up to leave, and when we got to Jameson, he was singing and dancing around and asking if we could go to the FAIR!  I'm pretty sure that he wasn't sick-sick....just anxious!  We walked back to watch the concert, and by then, he was singing his first, "last song", so we decided to leave. 

Again, the premier parking was FANTASTIC and we were able to get out and on the road with very minimal traffic!  We hit the interstate, and headed back home...but of course, we had to stop at our traditional after-concert place to eat:

Nothing like a bacon and egg sandwich and waffle at 11:30 at night!

We made it home around midnight and went straight to bed, where more storms woke 3 out of the 4 of us up in the middle of the night! (Jameson slept right through it....figures).

We did have a good time, despite the weather and Jameson being sick. We have decided that Jameson's concert-attending career is on hold for a while. He's gotten sick 2 out of the 3 concerts he's been to. I think he's going to have to wait until he's old enough to buy tickets on his own!  LOL

I hope you all have a wonderful and fantastic week!