oh yes. how sweet it is....

Well, it finally happened.  I'm still not sure how we just stepped out and went for it, but we did.  Last Saturday, around noon, BDawg and I got in my car...went to the post office...filled up the gas tank (not at the post office)...and hit the road for Tulsa.  And drove all the way there (not that it's far away or anything, I just mean we didn't turn around! We really went all the way there!)  We checked in to our hotel (this part was sort of a surprise. I didn't know exactly where our hotel was, but I did know a little about it).  Here is where we stayed:

The Ambassador Hotel is a restored old living space-- it was originally used, I believe, for oil field workers to be able to stay semi-long term back during the oil boom.  It has 55 rooms, a fantastic restaurant (we had the lamb and the venison...and a delectable chocolate torte....).  It was restored by the same people (team? contractors? business?) who restored the Colcord in downtown OKC, but the Ambassador is restored in a more traditional hotel style, while the Colcord is restored in a more modern design.  Both are incredibly nice.  We don't get out much (this was our first overnight date in over 2 years, because of Ridge...and I can probably count on two hands, maybe one, the number of dates we've had at all in the last 2 years)...but when we DO go out, my husband knows how to do it up right.  He always picks somewhere fantabulous to stay, he lets me order whatever I want for dinner, and the icing on top of the torte for this trip was my surprise Valentine's gift I'd been given a few days prior to this weekend :

  I'd been hinting about this concert for months.  Tickets were all snagged early so they were sky high. I told you my husband does things right in this department.  He got us a pair of tickets, while I was totally resigned to the fact that we weren't going (and I was okay with it).  But after we got checked in to the hotel and got all ready for the concert and headed down to the fantastic dinner...we then loaded up with the hotel's driver and he took us to the Brady, which was the perfect venue for the Mr. Taylors.  I am a big fan of both James AND Ben, so this was fantastic!  The Brady holds about 2500 people I believe, so it wasn't overcrowded really (I mean, IT was because it was full, but there weren't 18445723486 people there).  I wasn't sure how the concert would play out set-wise, because I didn't know if Ben would open and James would follow, like traditional concert order or what...but it turned out to be the greatest possible set up for someone who loves both of those Taylors!  They sang pretty much every song together, some of James' biggest hits, as well as some of Ben's songs.  Ben took some solos on James' songs, James sang with Ben, etc etc- every song was performed together by the father son fantabulous duo.  They each did one solo song- Ben right after intermission and James right at the beginning of the encore.  We had fantastic seats and everyone was so nice.  Everyone behaved appropriately (scene back to a Michael Buble concert we went to....a few WAY OVERLY inebriated high school girls were in front of us and they ruined the entire performance because they didn't know how to act.  seriously.  have some class, people.)  The show was about 2 hours, including the intermission, so that was a bit of a bummer for me, because I figured the show would be that long after the opening act.  So since there WAS no opening act it would've been cooler if they performed a little longer....but...I will try to not to be greedy (although...it isn't like those tickets were cheap).  Anyway, it was a super fun time!  We had to wait what seemed like forever on the driver to pick us up but we finally made it back to the hotel out of the cold.  The next morning we went to breakfast in downtown Tulsa and then headed home to see our boys, who were napping, but were glad to see us (especially Ridge, who had somewhat of a difficult time without mamamamamama). 

Here are some pictures. They all look the same, but I promise they are not all taken at the same time :)  I have some video but haven't uploaded it yet.  I'd go back to this concert in a second-- this was the first time Ben and James have toured together, Tulsa was the first stop on this tour, Ben is only touring with James for the first month or so of shows, and they performed a few of James' songs that had never before been performed in concert.  So it was a night of firsts, and it was neat to get to be there.  It might be forever before we get to do something like that again, but it was a great weekend! I know some of the pics are blurry...I forgot to turn my flash off on a few of them (don't worry- I did get in trouble for it!)