Wednesday is July...oh my...!

After we got home from the CMA Fest and Nashville vacation, I went up to Trenton for a Lobby Day with NJEA, caught up with Contact time, danced up a storm, attended the DEA Retirement Brunch, put off the Annual Day After the Last Day of School Trip to Seaside for a better day, attended a google tools workshop at the County library, went to Manayunk with the Brunch group for the Arts Festival, took the online course of defensive driving, updated the BCEA website, and went to lunch with Sandy and Conni, among other things.

I am glad folks had good weather for the Kenny Chesney concert. We saw the show in Nashville and it was awesome!
Jeff and family are moving to NY the end of July (last we'd heard it was the end of August) so we'll be in Myrtle Beach when they arrive, but hope to see them ASAP after our return.

CMA Fest 2009 Photos

Here's the pictorial of the event from our viewpoint:

Home again, home again....jiggedy jig

We left early from Nashville to drive in better weather than what we saw coming and it worked out fine. Fifteen hours later.......at like 8 a.m. ....we pulled into the Eastampton driveway and crashed.

We are still recuperating, but it was a great time and we are looking forward to next year's CMA Fest already!

I have some photos up on facebook and will be organizing and getting some more out on my usual cyber spots soon.

Tomorrow is supposed to be Lobby Day in Trenton (hold that education budget line!!!). I haven't heard back from BCREA yet confirming my participation, so I think I'll call them now to double check.

Wednesday is the last day of school for Delran kids and my fifth grade class that's graduating this year must be soooo excited! Good luck to you all!!!!

I am going to the Retirement Brunch on Thursday and the Senior Expo right after, and then Friday will be the annual Day After the Last Day of School Trip to Seaside, if the weather ever clears up.

We're home now until the Jamboree in the Hills in July.

The really good news is I found Jason Bechtold on Facebook today (thanks, Becky!)

Also, happy birthday to Beej and Pat.

See you next year!

On the last day of CMA FEST 2009 we bumped into Prospector folks (!!)
and bought tickets for next year's Music Festival.
The last show was star-studded and awesome! We saw Jack Ingram, Heidi Newfield, Montgomery Gentry, Miranda Lambert, John Rich, Taylor Swift, Sugarland, and Kenny Chesney.
We met some up and comers at Convention Hall in the day, saw Taylor Swift from a distance, and enjoyed John Michael Montgomery at the Riverfront, and our friends,
Bomshell, at the Sommet Center.

CMA FEST

Our first day at Fan Fair was long, but fun!
The weather predicted a bad thunderstorm, and sure enough a big one hit just as we got to the LP Parking field. We waited it out and the rest of the daytime was sunny and warm.
We picked up our materials, did a quick tour of the Convention Center, hustled down to Riverfront Park to watch a parade of stars (Phil Vassar, Heidi, Diamond Rio, and more). We sat by some new friends from Australia- Darren, Joan, and Brett. They do a lot of traveling! (Brett's a golf pro at a club near Syndney.)
We tried to find Heartland, but they were moved from the Hard Rock Stage to Chevy and we never found them.
En route we bumped into Lee Roy (from the Roys) whom we'd met in Myrtle Beach at the Beachwagon. They are playing here today and Saturday too.
We walked across the bridge to the LP Stadium, ate and relaxed in the car (all the venues had an hour wait to eat!) and then went in.
Our seats were good and Brooks and Dunn put on a great show...including soldiers during their "Only in America" finale. Reba had a cameo with them in "Cowgirls Don't Cry".
Reba was next and doing a great show when the emcee came out after song three and said dangerous weather was coming and they'd let us know when to come back in, but we had to leave our seats. Two hours later (who even thought it would happen?) they let us back in (a lot of folks left before the heavy rains came...following an hour of lightning).
Darius Rucker was awesome, Dierks Bently, too, and Brad Paisley was ready to sing all night!
We got home around 2:40 a.m. (Central zone time!) and now we're heading out for Day 2.

The Trek to Nashville Saga

We left at about 3 a.m. and it's now 4:36 and we have just passed Knoxville, so we have about two hours more to go. Tom did ALL the driving, so we pretty much stopped at every rest area when he got tired.

It just stopped pouring now. (It was sunny and warm all the way til right at the Tennessee line.) Traffic hasn't been too too bad.

The really fun part, though, was deciding to take a side trip to see the Natural Bridge when we saw the sign in Virginia for it.

Nashville, here we come!

We'll be leaving soon for the arduous drive to Nashville. We are very excited about attending our very first "Fan Fair", after hearing about it all these years. (Too bad xtu decided to have the 25th anniversary show the same week!)

It looks like there is so much going on all the time...I guess the hard part will be planning where to be and when for maximum entertainment and star contact/sightings.

This is going to be so much fun!!!