Some Crappy Pictures From an Awesome Night!

My friend Angie called me about 5 weeks ago with an idea to do a girls night with our little girls and take them to a gymnastics show at the Rose Garden starring the recent U.S. gymnasts from the Beijing Olympics. I thought it sounded like fun and at the time the Olympics were still going on and I knew Sarah would be thrilled at the idea of seeing some of the "famous" people she had been watching on T.V. Well, as you can see from my dinky cell phone pictures, Angie got us AWESOME seats! We could see the color of the girls' fingernail polish and Angie even got to give several of the Olympians a high five as they ran past just in front of us.
This is Paul Hamm on the horse with the recent U.S. men's gymnastics team all around him. They each jumped up to do their thing. I thought it was a little cheesy that they had the guys with no shirts on, but the older ladies behind me sure loved it.
Sarah and Natalie were my fun little dates.
After several attempts and one "almost", the girls finally got the autograph of Ashley Amlick (I may be spelling her last name wrong - the last two letters of the last name could have been "ek" or "ch") She may not be an Olympian, but she performed that night and the girls were excited to get an autograph. She's a local girl that could be a future Olympian - wouldn't that be cool? (o: Anyway, she was very sweet to make our girls feel special and I think she had fun signing autographs. (o: Just before we found Ashley, our group of girls was one person away from, I think, Alicia Sacramone (one of the Olympians with brown hair (o: ) There were some very sad and upset girls until we found Ashley.

Some cute and annoying things from the night...

During the show, a Disney rock band KSM performed several numbers. When they came out with their punk rock hair and crazy outfits and started playing the drums and guitars, Natalie got a huge grin on her face. She thought they were so cool. Sarah loved it too. The other little girls plugged their ears and didn't care for those parts. I guess that made it obvious that our fam loves to rock! (o: We often crank up the music at our house and in our car and have many favorite songs from The Who and Aerosmith to Neil Diamond and Hannah Montana. (o: Rock on!

Natalie was so smitten by the "rock stars" and the gymnasts, she insisted, in the middle of the show, on making a sign to hold up to show her love. All I had were some small pieces of cardstock I brought for autographs. She worked for 5-10 minutes on a cute little sign with a picture that said, "I love you girls and boys". I helped her with the spelling even though I really didn't want to miss any of the show. She was so cute and held up her little sign as often as she could. (I had to tell her not to hold it up the whole time to cover up the people's view behind us. This made her pretty mad.) What a cute little thing. Sarah got really into the show too and liked Natalie's sign idea, so she made one too. What supportive fans they are.

Now an explanation for the crappy pictures... Did I, the picture crazy-woman forget my camera? Was I having so much fun I forgot to pull it out? No. Not only did I bring my nice digital SLR camera, I also brought my mini camcorder. I wanted coverage of this event! As we went through the part in the line when the guys check your bags for dangerous things and food (so you are forced to buy a drink and a hot dog for $10.00), the older gentleman took interest in my camera slung around my neck. He started taking off the lens cap and fiddling with the lens. No one touches my camera and fiddles! This really, really bothered me and made me feel a little violated. I pushed his hand away and told him to stop touching my camera and tried to grab my lens cap. He called a younger guy over and pointed at my camera who told me that "professional" cameras were not allowed. Then he looked in my purse and saw my video camera. It hadn't even crossed my mind that either would be a problem (I guess I don't get out to these sorts of events very much). It was not clear on the tickets and I have never heard of the rule that point and shoot cameras are okay, but SLRs are not. The camcorder thing, I'll admit, I should have known.

So it turns out that three of us in our group brought SLR cameras and we were all escorted over to a counter where we were told to turn them over. We all had some very valid concerns with this request. Where will our cameras be held? Was there a tag or official way to sign them in to ensure we got the right ones back? Who had access to our $1000 cameras? The answers were basically, behind an itty bitty, easily accessed counter. No tags to keep track of whose camera is whose and basically any employee or sneaky patron could do some camera shopping behind the counter. LAME. We were not about to turn over our cameras. Then we were asked to return them to the car. We rode the MAX. Hmmmm. Finally, we found a very sweet friend in our group who did drive and took all the cameras to her car. Grrrr. It was all very frustrating. So that is why I have crappy cell phone pictures. Man, we were sitting so close, it killed me to think of the awesome pictures I could have gotten. Shawn Johnson's eyeball, for instance. I laugh when I think that I almost brought my telephoto lens with me too. So much for those plans. (o:

Despite this little setback - the night was sooo much fun and we had a great time hanging out with good friends and each other. We did get some cute group shots with Kelly's "legal" camera. I'll have to post those later. The main parts of the night that stand out were watching Sarah and Natalie's faces during the show - priceless, eating hot dogs, nacho chips and ice cream on the floor at the Rose Garden with our big group - almost priceless, KA-Ching$$$ (I'm going to invest in stadium food courts - they seem to be doing well), watching the awesome athleticism of the Olympic gymnasts with my jaw open half the time. I especially loved when the men's team did the number at the end doing tricks on the uneven bars to some hip hop music and adding tons of personality to their moves and dismounts - amazing and funny at the same time. The ride to and from the show on the Max with Shannan and Angie and the girls was fun too. The girls were sooo hyper on the way there I wondered if there was applause when we got off. (o: Good times.