Breath

The only way I remember the difference between breath and breathe is mostly due to my favorite band, Needtobreathe. Thanks to their name, I only have to think about how they spell it and I know whether or not I am trying to spell breath or breathe.

As far as Lent and this challenge, I'm not sure why breath is the word.

Is it a little strange that I'm just now questioning who came up with these words and why they chose these words? We're not to Good Friday yet. Jesus has not taken his last breath. He's still breathing. In fact, he's about to share a Passover meal with his Disciples.

Which makes me wonder how bad their breath must have been. We've come a long way and I'm happy to celebrate mouth wash and good dental hygiene.

guess who was in town?

Needtobreathe.

We saw them in concert tonight.

They played at Meijer Gardens. It's a beautiful venue, outside with terraced lawn seating. We went with our friends Jason and Chandra (you'll remember we went to the Tigers game with them two weeks ago).

This concert was the last one for this tour. The tour was promoting their recent album, "Rivers in the Wasteland". You'll recall Bill bought me their album and I blogged about it here.

It was a great night. It was a little breezy, a partly cloudy sky, and a beautiful setting. I did keep track of their set list. They played new songs and a few from older albums (but the most recent, not from the two oldest albums).

They closed the night with three encore songs. The last one being a song called, "More Heart, Less Attack". Bear, the lead singer, explained that after their last album and tour he and his brother, Bo, weren't speaking. They finally worked it out and made this album (it may have been during the making of this album, I don't remember exactly). At any rate, this song speaks volumes about their experience  and as the title says, can teach us all about being more kind.

It's not that they just sang this song, but it was the three original band members; Bear, Bo and Seth standing around a microphone with just their instruments. The entire audience got quiet. It was so quiet I could hear the birds chirping.

It was amazing.

They have ended other concerts doing the same thing with other songs. But it has never been so quiet. I was especially impressed because we were outside. At previous concerts, indoors, there has still been some kind of noise usually talking. But not last night.

I'm thankful for musicians and their talent especially Needtobreathe.

totally random Saturday post

Yup, the muffins are better with sugar.

Yesterday, Friday, I had a wedding rehearsal. I know the bride from Needtobreathe concerts.

With the rehearsal being yesterday, that means the wedding was today. It was a chilly May day here in Grand Rapids, and it started off cloudy. However it has changed over to blue skies and sunshine. The wedding ceremony was lovely and the bride was beautiful.

They were efficient with their photos and everything was all wrapped up by 3pm. That gave me time to come home and do some light housework (i.e. clean sheet day).

Then Bill and I headed out for date night at one of the local establishments, The Green Well. It was delicious. It's yet another farm to table dining experience. We have several and this one made the best places to eat in GR list.

The list is correct, the food was superb. I had the Cherry Street Pork Pesole and Bill had the special Spring Carbonara. We also tried their truffle fries. (Honestly, I like the fries at Brewery Vivant better, or the "crack" fries at Hop Cat, but you don't know until you try!)

We are now relaxing and watching the Tigers vs. Red Sox game on the tele. Speaking of tele, did you catch the ultimate match on Jeopardy Thursday night and last night? It was the champions of champions. If you like Jeopardy at all then you know who Ken, Brad and Roger are and they are the three who competed for the ultimate prize (I don't think it was advertised as "ultimate", I think technically they were calling it the Tournament of Decades but it came down to the ultimate show-down, at least in my book).

I'm thankful for all the great restaurants that support local farms, right here in West Michigan.

Tuesday

Needtobreathe's new album came out on Tuesday. Bill preordered the vinyl package back at Valentine's. He printed off the order and gave that to me then. On Monday, the order arrived. I got the vinyl record (yup, they still make records), a t-shirt, and a poster. Inside the record album was a card with a code for the digital download. Needless to say, I was excited.

The new album is called, "Rivers In the Wasteland". I didn't get it on my phone in time to listen to it on the flight. I have since rectified that situation. I have listened to it a total of two times (all the way through). So far, I like it.

I have blogged about Needtobreathe enough times that at one point, if you googled them, my blog showed up on page six.

Yes, I realize how much one would need to do to figure that statistic out, but it was true at one point.

At any rate, they are by far my most favorite band. If you haven't read my other blog posts, you may go look for them. 

Tuesday, I was thankful for their new album.

stamping

Monday night, I went to a stamping party. We made ten cards (well, I got eight made before I came home).

I'm posting this today because I will have very little time to post. I was at Unity last night until late (we saw Needtobreathe!) and today is the Junior Quota Summer Camp. I'll take pictures to post on another day.

The lighting has been very poor lately, the rain has come to stay. That's okay. We need it. The lawn is finally green again

216

I just liberated 216 photos off the camera onto my computer.

Oops!

It's not like I was holding them hostage. I'd say 70% of the photos are on my laptop. They weren't deleted off the camera and therefore hadn't made it onto my desktop. Which is where ALL of my photos are stored.

Yes, it's our camera.

But they're mostly my pictures.

Bill has been known to snap a few pictures. But I'm the photographer in the family. Or at least I hog the camera. Most of the pictures are of flowers, butterflies and Needtobreathe. I'm not sure Bill wants all the photos that I take.

I store them on my computer. If there are photos he's taken, he puts them into his Photo Bucket account. The files still end up on my computer.

It's how we share.

Back to the 216 photos that I liberated. Did you read my post from the other day? Those pictures were actually already in my blog archives, yet it still took me four years to publish them!!

Here are a few things I blogged about, but never showed you the pictures.

Uncle Bill holding Spencer.

Uncle Bill helping to dress Spencer in the outfit from Uncle Bill (it says, "I'm a Classic")
Uncle Bill was commenting on what a grip the little guy has!!


The buttermilk cake with butter cream frosting and coconut that I made for Easter.

Our wine stock. It was empty, so we refilled it. Bill said, "Take a picture! Every spot is filled." So I took a picture.

I can't promise I'll do a better job posting photos with my posts, but I'll keep trying! At least I remember to take pictures.

the concert

I am a dork. And a huge Needtobreathe fan. I left the house at 5:05pm to go to the Intersection (the venue). The doors didn't even open until 7pm. Our tickets (Sarah, Lindsay and Chandra) were at Will Call, so I thought I would at least pick them up, then get in line.

Fifty other people had the same idea.

The people around me in line were very friendly. We all agreed to hold each others spots while we took turns going to Will Call when it opened at 6pm.

Lindsay and Sarah got there around 6:15p and had to wait in the line outside. Eventually that line wrapped all the way around the block... and it's a large block.

I made it up to the stage and got our spot. I talked to the people to my right and they agreed to help me "hold" space until Lindsay and Sarah got inside (Chandra had to come later; she had to leave work, go home and feed her sweet baby, Addison and then come back downtown). A couple of girls came up behind me, so I warned them that I was waiting for my friends.

I figure it's the best thing to do. You can either be mean about it and let your friend force their way to the front, or warn the people around you, so when your friends force their way to the front, it's not a surprise. It's not any less rude, since it's general admission, but it is what it is. They had school and practice. They couldn't be there at 5:15p like me, the dork.

Despite the rude girls, it worked. Lindsay and Sarah found me.

At 8:00p Ben Rector came on stage and played, even though he had the flu. He had gone to the Urgent Care earlier in the day. The doctor told him not to play, but he did anyway! He sounded good, even though he wasn't feeling good. Sarah loves him, so she was super excited.

Right before he came on stage, Chandra had called me. Addison was being fussy (she has another ear infection, poor muffin) so Chandra wasn't sure she was going to get her calmed down. Then, during the last song, Chandra texted me that she was there! (I left her ticket at Will Call with her name on it. She told me later that when she walked up to the window to pick it up, as she was saying, "My friend left my ticket here for me..." the girl was reaching for it. She was the last person into the show! That will mean something a little later.)

Then, her next text said, "Stuck".

Where? I asked.

What happened to her was this: She walked into to a crowd of 1500+, the concert was sold out (the Intersection can hold something like 1537 people, it's a random number -it's not 1500 even) and it was packed. She saw a group of people headed through the crowd, so she attached herself to them and got about a 1/4 of the way forward. Then she said she would just point and say, "my friends are just right there!" and get through another couple of feet. Then she would say that again. If she saw people moving forward, she joined them. And a couple of times they would realize there was one more person coming through and sort of pull her up with them. She sent me another text when she got stuck about 20 feet behind us. She thought that was it, she wasn't going to get any closer. I asked her if she wanted one of us to come join her. A few minutes later, I still hadn't received a text back, someone grabbed my arm.

It was Chandra! She had managed to get to the girls behind us and was grabbing me to pull herself forward. I think we all sort of grabbed her and pulled her through.

She made it!!

It was a few more minutes before Needtobreathe came onto stage. Their set design was superb, I enjoyed the attention to detail. Here are photos (don't worry, I didn't take that many)

The backdrop looked like a typewriter, here it is lit

and here it is not lit...I started taking pictures of the set lists (or begging for one after the show) but there wasn't one at our end of the stage! There was a photographer taking pictures and he was kind enough to try to take a picture and then let me take a picture, which didn't work. After the show I asked if he could get one for me, but by the time he got to it, the roadie had already given it to somebody.

Knowing that I might not get a set list, I started recording the songs. Here's the thing about that. When I heard them on tour for their album, "The Heat", I recorded "More Time". It's one of my favorite songs. But when you're recording, you're missing out on being present. So halfway through the song I stopped recording. But because it was live, they performed it differently then the recorded version. I loved that version and because I stopped recording it, it only remains in my mind (which ultimately is the best place, it's not like I would be able to sell copies of it or anything like that).

So I didn't want to record the entire song, I just wanted enough that when I go back and listen I'll know which song so I can recreate the set list (dorkiness warning: I create playlists in iTunes of each concert, hence the Need for a set list).

I enjoyed the show without spending the entire time recording it or trying to take pictures.

When it was over we screamed and screamed some more.

They came back for an encore and played three more songs. Bear (the lead singer) kept telling us how honored they feel about their fans. That when they had the chance to play at Ford Field [when they opened for Taylor Swift] last summer, it still doesn't compare to coming to venues like the Intersection where the line wraps around the block two hours before the doors open, and that it sells out. He also mentioned the first time they played at the Intersection (I was there, I blogged about it here) and how far they've come. It was clear the emotion that he was feeling was real. I like the "small"ish venue and hope they don't get too big for their breeches.

If you're still reading, thanks. That was a lot.

Actually it's not over yet. They stopped playing and the light came up. Lindsay looked at her watch and said, "It's 10:50!" Oops. They had a pre-calc test this morning. They left immediately. Chandra and I sort of hung around, I tried and failed to get the set list, and then the pangs of standing for seven hours hit me. Whoa, were my legs sore!

Chandra and I headed toward the exit. We both agreed we wouldn't hang around to try to talk with them. The doors were pretty clogged. Finally a security guy yelled that "there's another exit over here" which was right by where we were stuck, so we went for it. We walked out across the street from my car. But Chandra's car was two parking lots away.

Here's after concert logic: we walked to her car, because it was in a lot, and then she drove me back over to my car. Hey, why should I pay to "park" when I would just be dropping her off? It helped stretch out our legs too.

As we were walking she was telling me about her parking saga, which was just as eventful as pushing through the crowd of 1500 people! The first lot she pulled into only accepted one dollar bills. All she had was a ten or a twenty. She had to back out of the entrance and go to the other lot. At which point a pheasant (not peasant, as I kept saying when I was retelling this story to Bill) crossed the road.

A pheasant crossed the road in the middle of a city at 8pm.

Would you like to guess why?

Because we have no idea.

At any rate, Chandra finally made it into the second lot which accepted credit cards.

The last thing I have to say, because it didn't fit anywhere else in this post, is: this was the first concert I saw them that was smoke-free! How nice it was to walk out and not smell like an ash-tray! Or have a cough this morning.

That's almost as good as seeing the band. Almost.

Needtobreathe

There was a time when you could google Needtobreathe and my blog was on the first several pages. Mostly because I've talked about them a lot. But that was before they got a song in a ridiculously sappy movie ("P.S. I Love You") or on the Overstock.com commercial. They've also had other songs in tv shows and one of the band members, Bo, was in the movie "Radio" with Cuba Gooding Jr and Ed Harris.

For those of you who have been long-time blog readers, you'll probably be able to guess why I'm writing about this (and if for some reason you really don't know yet, maybe this will help: it's 11:35pm as I write this post).

I just saw them in concert.

*Sigh*

I'll write more tomorrow and I'll post pictures.

Tuesday randomness

There are a couple things on my mind, so in the random fashion, I'll blog about all of them.

Ellen. I love her show. She is funny and I know that the best thing is laughter. I easily fall out of the routine of watching her during the summer, but once her new season starts, I find it easy to get back into watching. I also like watching her because she's so honest and true. She (like me) does not read the tabloids and questions her guests out of her own curiosity, not out of what everyone else is asking.

Bullying. Ellen addresses this constantly. I have found it very difficult working with the youth, that they are feeling so bad about themselves that they turn to things like cutting. Bullying is often the cause. I urge all the youth out there to find someone to talk to. You are not alone.

Quiet Tuesday Morning shopping. It was so quiet at Meijer this morning, I wondered if they were actually open. They were. It was pleasant for sure.

New Album release day. Needtobreathe's new album, "The Reckoning" is on the shelves today. I tried going to buy it on my way to Meijer, but it was too early. I'm hoping Bill will take me out after dinner to purchase it. As big of a fan as I am of Needtobreathe, I think I'll be watching them from afar. They are popular and tickets are no longer the cheap $10 or $12. I'll always be a fan, but don't care to get lost in the crowd. I liked it better when the shows were small and intimate. *sigh* At least I can still buy their cd.

That's it. If you have any thoughts on any of these subjects, you know I love to hear from you!

another obsession

Because yesterday's announcement wasn't enough to make me pee my pants, I had two emails this morning about the release of Needtobreathe's new album, The Reckoning. In case you haven't gone far enough back in my blog, I "heart" Needtobreathe.

First, I talked about them here (actually, I wrote about them when Heather and I saw Jars of Clay in March of 2007, but I'm not linking to that post because I basically talk about Needtobreathe in one sentence). Then we saw them at the Big Ticket Festival. Then, for some bizarre reason, I did not mention the next time I saw them. But I did here. And the last time I saw them, I wrote about it here.

I have gone all of 2011 without seeing them. They opened for Taylor Swift. And the one night they were in Grand Rapids, I was in Bay City with the youth group. I survived. No, really I did. I know Dave and Bill will find that hard to believe, but I'm not in the corner rocking myself. In fact, the night of the concert, I didn't even remember it. But Sarah (who rocks) bought Chandra and me a Needtobreathe bracelet. Um, bracelet is not the right term... but it's one of those plastic bands with their name on it. Whatever. It totally rocks and is super special because Sarah got them for us.

I could go on and on. I can't help it. I really like their music. So as I wait for the new Muppet Movie to come out in November, I will probably survive with the newest album from Needtobreathe. It's set to release September 20th. That's in 26 days.

Guess who was in town?

Really? Did you have to guess? If you did, and you guessed Needtobreathe you would be correct! They played for the fourth time at the Intersection (it's a venue, not the street corner, although it does sit on a corner).

Yes, I saw them again. This was the seventh time I have seen them. It was a great show! I did not take a set list, but I did get a photo of it. You may think this is weird, if you do, I apologize; I take their set list and make it a playlist in my iTunes. Maybe it's less weird if I tell you I only have three set lists out of the seven concerts.

(this is from November)

Last night's concert was a fifteen song set. It rocked! If you haven't heard any of their songs yet, (honestly I'll be surprised because they're going mainstream, good bye cheap tickets and small venues) click here to to check out their website and listen to some music.

Another Needtobreathe concert

It was September 16, 2008 the last time I saw Needtobreathe in Grand Rapids. They released their new album on August 25th, 2009. I am not a critic and cannot pretend to write like one. I love their new album as much as the last, which I love as much as their first. Their sound is fresh, it's southern but not country. They share their roots (listen to Washed By the Water, which Bear wrote about their father) and I find their lyrics to be honest. If you haven't heard them before, check out the video from the concert. It's the last song of their encore, "Something Beautiful" or go to their website and listen to the featured song. I hope you enjoy it at least half as much as I do!!!

big fan

This past weekend, Heather and I drove to Gaylord, Michigan to attend the Big Ticket Festival. We had a great time. We got to see Matthew West, David Crowder Band, Leeland, Barlow Girl, Fireflight and our favorite boys, Needtobreathe.


l-r Bo, Joe, Emily, Seth, Bear (Needtobreathe)

As you can see, we had our pictures taken with them. The best part was when I got my umbrella case signed by all of them and mentioned that we've seen them four times. (Bear had asked the audience who had seen them before and Heather and I screamed and there was one other person who also screamed, so Bear said, "that's what I thought, no ones knows us." I had to let them know at the signing that we did know who they are.) Bo then said, "I thought you looked familiar." *sigh* We've met them before as you can read about here. It's nice to be recognized. Especially because we consider them to be big stars...

Check them out if you aren't familiar with their stuff. Visit their website where you can listen to snippets from their newest album. Their Shine On video on YouTube is amazing. I'll let you know when we'll be seeing them again. Because we won't be letting too many days pass without a Needtobreathe concert. Not when we're their biggest fans!