A Killers Christmas Present

James and I usually don't exchange Christmas presents, or any presents for that matter. We've been living off student loans for a long time and unfortunately Stanford Law School doesn't factor "awesome gifts" into our yearly allowance. Alas, with everything that we were going through this year I decided to totally splurge and buy James a Christmas present I knew he would adore! His favorite band is the Killers (2nd favorite is Imagine Dragons) and I found out that both of them were playing in Oakland at a concert called "Not So Silent Night." Done and done.

The timing was rather unfortunate. I was so excited to surprise him with a new Killers shirt and the tickets and was waiting until as close to the date as possible...but darn it that week was just not all that jolly. He came home from school on that lame miscarriage Monday and I handed him an envelope with everything stuffed inside (so not how I had imagined it happening!). He was still really surprised and so ridiculously excited. He wore that Killers shirt nearly everyday leading up to the concert ;)

There were times during that week that I wondered if going to that concert was the best idea for my body (jury's still out on that one) but I definitely think it was the best idea for my brain, and Jim's brain too! We didn't have to think about real life issues or answer tough questions about our future, and we didn't have to process the events of the week or wonder what knowledge we were supposed to gain. Instead, we acted way too young, danced way too hard, sang at the top of our lungs and got home way too late (I don't know the last time I was driving my car at 1 am!) It was a blast.

Imagine Dragons was the first up. They were fabulous. There were five opening bands and while most of them were amazing (GroupLove and Passion Pit), a couple were just weird. Maybe we're not cool enough or maybe we're too old or maybe we weren't high or maybe we're not big enough rock fans...but through one whole band's time we looked like this:

 

and this: 

and then this:

(see the guy yawning in the background. Hilarious!)

And then they set up the thunderbolt and Jim and I started to get excited. REALLY excited. We took a few pictures of us during the Killers nearly 2 hour set but they were all blurry because we were rockin out! And we tried to get a good one of Ronnie (the drummer) for T because he's his favorite, but that was blurry too. Too crazy!

But we did get these:

We sat in the 2nd row of the seats (because when I bought the tickets I thought I'd still be pregnant and didn't think I could stand in general admission for 6 hours). It was perfect because we sat through the 4 hours of opening bands and then danced through the Killers. I'm so, so glad that James loved it. He said it was the absolute best Christmas gift of all time!

PS--A HUGE thank you to my Mom who watched the boys while we played! And pretty much for the rest of that week as well ;)