Ft. Lauderdale/Bon Jovi

I know it's taken me awhile to post about my trip. When I came back I came down with a horrible upper respiratory infection and have just now gotten over that. I also had a very full week that week...I had committed myself to several events and on top of being sick it was busy! I had the SWUPYS (every heard of the ESPY's well we have the SWUPY's) I'll blog on that later... and then we had the Jr/Sr banquet that week as well and as the Jr class sponsor I had several (many) responsibilities with that. So...anyway. NOW about our trip...

My best friend, Jennifer and I had always planned to take a 30 year trip. We just got a little side tracked during our 30th year... I was expecting precious little Alex and she was planning a beautiful wedding. So..we delayed it a bit and this year seemed perfect as it coincided with the Bon Jovi 'Lost Highway' tour. We decided to go south as it was much cheaper to fly south rather than north and warmer, too. So to Ft. Lauderdale we went. It was great fun. We found a great deal on a hotel on the beach. Thursday we had no problems with our flight. We found a great place right on the beach to eat some seafood, had dinner and even made it back to the hotel in time to see Lost. Perfect! We slept in on Friday and then went out to Sawgrass Mills a huge outlet mall. We had lunch at the Cheesecake Factory (our favorite!) and then we shopped and I do mean shopped! We mostly bought for our kids...man how things change. We both added 10lbs to our luggage home from what we bought. I did buy 2 pairs of shoes at the Clark outlet. We shopped until about 9:30 then went back to the Cheesecake Factory for some appetizers to finish off our night. Couldn't have been a more perfect day for us. Saturday we had spa pedicures and then laid by the pool which was ocean side - absolutely perfect. We then got ready and headed back down to the ocean drive section and had dinner at this Italian place we had seen, it was great. We were then on our way to the Bank Atlantic Center for the concert. It was about a 30 minute drive from there. Traffic became thicker as we headed out that way. The center was directly across from the outlets so we were going to park at the outlet mall and walk over to the center to save money (it was $20.00 to park). We kept seeing people walking away from the center and we thought that was strange. Finally we found a park and started walking across. There were people standing everywhere and at first I just thought they hadn't opened the doors although it was 7:30 and it was supposed to start at 7:30. Jennifer asked someone what was going on and they said "There's been a bomb threat." Seriously, a bomb threat at a Bon Jovi concert!! What the heck. So thus began our long, long night...we waited and we waited and we waited. Finally, at 9:00 they decided they would let us in. It took forever for 20,000 fans to enter. I finally got in my seat at 10:00. We missed Daughtry, although later I heard he only played 3 songs. Bon Jovi was awesome. He thanked all the local police and EMS workers for what they had done to secure the building and he thanked us for our courage. It's sad that some coward tried to wreck the evening. Thus the times we live in.


My favorite of John!




Bank Atlantic Center

Waiting with the rest of the 20,000 fans...



After Dinner before the concert.


Ocean Drive




This is our hotel.

Now we begin planning for our 40 year trip...I'm thinking the West Coast!