Elton John Concert

Friday I took that day off childcare, met Kelli and headed towards Moline, IL to see Elton John in concert.  Kelli and I made plans along the way to stop at quilt shops both traveling there and home.  In the upcoming weeks I’ll be showing you FOUR quilt shops.  You are in for a treat!  We found one we absolutely LOVED and will for sure be making a special trip to go again.

We stopped at the thrift stores we knew of along the way too.  Friday we hit that bag sale jack pot at one of our favorite shops.  It was a $2 bag sale day.  Kelli cleaned them out of men’s 100% cotton shirts.  She got three grocery bags STUFFED.  As we leaving the store there was a shopping cart out front.  Everything in there was free.  Well I saw some jeans in the cart and knew that Kelli had been contemplating doing a mock cathedral window quilt with jeans like Jody had done when she was here for a sewing weekend.  Here’s a picture of one Jody made that I bought at her benefit.

I love the quilt.  I use it often with the childcare kids.  I fold it and put it in the bottom of the wagon.  I use it as a play mat for the babies.  Well Kelli wanted to make an eye-spy one for Buck and Lora’s baby…but she needed jeans.

We raided the free box and then Kelli asked if I minded if we went back in and bought a couple bags of jeans.  She ended up with FOUR bags of jeans besides the free ones.  The back seat of the truck was filling quickly.

From there we went to eat at a Mexican restaurant.  At the cash register by the door they had Laffy-Taffy.  Well I like the banana ones so Kelli threw in the quarter and grabbed two….walked to the truck, popped one into my mouth and ugh.  Half of my tooth came off and I swallowed it with my Laffy-Taffy.  That’s it.  At almost 52 years of age, I’m giving up Laffy-Taffy.  Thankfully my tooth isn’t painful and the dentist will squeeze me in on Monday to get a start on it.  I’m assuming a crown is what I need to fix it.

Geographically by now, we were close to where Kayla lives.  She called and asked where we were.  We ended up meeting up with her at her school and visited for a bit.  Then were headed back on the road towards Moline.  By now it was starting to get dark and the roads where no longer familiar so we let GPS lead the way.

We got to our hotel a few minutes before 6pm with the concert at 8pm.  We were confused as we thought the hotel was only suppose to be a half mile from the I Wireless Center.  Well after some consulting we realized that we were a half mile from the I wireless STORE but 15 minutes the wrong direction from the concert venue which was no longer called the I Wireless Center and was now the Taxslayer Center.  So we decided to cancel our reservation and go to the concert.  Once it was done we would head back towards home and find a hotel.

We were off to the concert.  As with all concerts, the lines were long but not terrible…and oh so worth it!

We were really happy with our tickets.  They were right next to the exit out from the balcony.  Kelli felt pretty young as most people were around my age.

We sat in our seats and people watched as the auditorium filled.  Kelli persuaded me to take a couple selfies.  See what this girl has me doing???

I only had my phone camera and I’m not good with the settings so my pictures are terrible.  Sorry.

Elton John is now 70 years old.  He started playing at 8pm.  He quit at 10:10 and came out to do one song of an encore.  He NEVER was not performing….Often singers have the band play an instrumental while they take a five minute break…Nope, not Sir Elton.  You can see that he is a piano player first and foremost in his mind.  He had that piano working full force from all ends of the keyboard.  The lyrics seemed secondary….and that was okay.

We were so impressed that his drummer has been with him all of his touring days.  How cool is that?

It was fun…we had a good time.  As with all concerts I sometimes wish the performers would sing the songs exactly like they are on the albums I listen to without variations but I guess changing them up is what makes it a show.

It was LOTS of fun and I’d happily go again.  I’m so happy that I was able to check this off my bucket list.  FUN-FUN…I’m so glad Kelli likes doing these things with me.

Once the concert was over we headed out the door, down the steps and to the truck.  We NEVER waited in any traffic at all.  It was awesome.  We couldn’t have had better seats to see and to get out.  It was good bye to Moline and on towards Iowa.

I wasn’t tired.  In fact Kelli and I were both pretty hyped from the concert so driving to find a hotel was the perfect option.  We ended up driving to Muscatine where we found a hotel and made plans for the next day to visit the two quilt shops in town before we headed towards Cedar Rapids to have lunch with Buck and Lora and then head to home.

Earlier in the week Kelli had connected with Deb W who is a blog reader and now friend who lives in Muscatine and asked her for quilt shop recommendations.  She suggested some awesome shops but I’ll tell you about them in another post.

I’ll close here with saying Kelli and I had an awesome weekend filled with family visits, quilt shops visits (5 different shops), time together and of course a concert with Elton John!!  I was a happy girl.