So I finally watched Star Wars...

http://slapcountdown.tumblr.com/page/15 

Now, Marshall is not my FAVORITE character on HIMYM [How I Met Your Mother, for those who aren't cultured enough to know the acronym,] but taking 2nd place to Barney Stinson is not too shabby. Until yesterday, I was one of the people in the world who hadn't seen Star Wars, and no, it was not because I lived the Star Wars. I really don't have a good reason for not having watched the original film before now, I just hadn't watched it. So, over the holiday weekend, I visited the library (that's this place where you can go and borrow books, movies, CDs for free, in case you weren't sure) and checked out the first movie of the franchise:  Episode IV: A New Hope. And, because I'm super cool and hip, I watched it on a holiday afternoon with my mom and dad. 

So, here's the thing. I'm not a hater of Star Wars. I thought it was a decent movie, although I want to punch Han Solo in the face so bad. (On an unrelated note, Han Solo reminds me of my friend Kam, whom I've mentioned countless times on this blog. And I had a dream the other night where I was driving with Kam, and somehow a raccoon got into my car, and bit me. I was panicking because I got bit by a raccoon, so I crashed my car into a tree. Then, I was freaking out because I crashed my car into a tree, and Kam said something super sassy and I couldn't deal with it, so dream-Kelsey turned and punched him in the face. Then real-life Kelsey woke up crying, because I thought I had actually punched Kam in the face. I have to stop drinking pink Kinky before I go to bed. This tangent wasn't super off track, because I wanted to punch Han Solo in the face -> Han Solo reminds me of Kam -> I punched Kam in the face in my dream the other night. Anyway, back to the point.) Like I said, it was a cool movie. I enjoyed finally having some context for all the Star Wars tunes I've played a billion times in my band career, and knowing where they were at in terms of the film. I actually watched the movie a 2nd time because I've been sidelined with a mysterious hip injury and I'm not supposed to do a lot of moving for the next few days. And I'll probably watch the rest of the movies over the summer, and I'm assuming my reaction is going to be just like it was with the first one. However, I'm not going to like watch the movies so much that I can quote them, or start styling my hair like Princess Leia, or buy a cardboard cutout of Harrison Ford as Han Solo to put in the corner of my bedroom. 

So, my final verdict: Star Wars is decent. I can see why it's created the franchise it has, and why some people go apes**t crazy about them. But, I think I'm just going to be a chill fan of the Star Wars. 

To the Girl with her First Broken Heart

Let me start with this: I'm sorry. Dealing with a broken heart is unlike anything you've probably ever had to deal with before in your life- a whole new kind of pain, and I'm sorry you're having to go through that. Unfortunately, this probably won't be the last time you get your heart broken, but there's something about that first time that makes it sting worse than the others. I know what you're going through and how bad it sucks, so let me offer some advice.

Don't let anyone dictate how you handle this heartbreak. What I mean by that is this: every heartbreak is different, every person is different, every situation is different, and everyone handles all of that in a different way. Nobody has the right to tell you how to deal with it. Some people can get over it in weeks, or months. Some people, like me, have stretches where everything is fine, and then, out of nowhere, the pain comes back and you have a rough couple of days or weeks. Nobody is allowed to tell you that you've been grieving too long, or that you're being too dramatic about the whole thing, or that you just need to "move on." They'll handle their heartbreak in their way, you need to handle yours in the way that works for you. They might talk about you behind your back, about how you are handling this, and how they think you are handling it wrong. Let them. Screw them. You grieve for however long you need to grieve, sweetheart.

You don't have to go through this alone. You've got a mom who will sit on your bed with you at 3:00 in the morning while you sob for 3 hours. You've also got a mom who will buy you chocolate the next day, and jokingly threaten that "you better not have any rum in that glass" when you are drinking Diet Coke at 9:00 in the morning, just to try and get you to smile. You've got a friend who will sit with you and just let you cry on their shoulder. The same friend will be there anytime the feelings come back and you need to talk about them. This friend will also say anything to make you laugh or smile, just because they are sick of seeing you frowning and being sad. Of course, you'll have at least one friend who threatens to kick his ass the next time they see him, knowing full well that they wouldn't ever actually do it, but saying it because it's what you need to hear at the time. Use these people. It's a terrible idea to try and go through this alone, just trust me.

It's so easy to hate the guy who did this to you. You put your heart in his hands, and trusted that he wouldn't do anything to hurt it. And then he turned around and broke it, shattered it into a million pieces, or curbstomped it like a possum (inside joke.) Why wouldn't you hate him? I totally get it- about the third or fourth day, the tears and sadness get replaced with a ton of anger. It sounds crazy, but don't hate him. When you want to hate him, think about what made you fall in love with him in the first place. Whatever it is, it's still there, despite the heartbreak you've got right now. Try to think about it from his perspective: as awful as you feeling being the one with the broken heart, there's a good chance he feels just as awful about doing that to you. And even though he may never love you like you loved him, that doesn't mean he doesn't feel anything for you. "I might not be in love with you, but that doesn't mean I don't love you." A direct quote from the guy that broke my heart. It's possible to still be friends with that person, if that's what you want. Don't let anyone tell you that's what you need to do, though. If you are perfectly fine not having that person in your life at all, that's fine too. It might take time to rebuild that friendship, but if that's what you want, go for it. Don't let anyone tell you that you can't be friends with him again just because he broke your heart.

It's easy to hate him for doing this to you, but it's also a lot easier to hate yourself for "letting it happen." Read this next sentence carefully: THIS IS NOT YOUR FAULT. Don't sit around and torture yourself by saying things like this: "I should have known this would happen." "I wish I had never met him." "We should have just stayed friends." You will drive yourself insane thinking like this. In Looking for Alaska, John Green says "We can't know better until knowing better is useless." Remember this quote. Taking chances, on people, on opportunities, on adventures is a part of life. You liked this guy, and you took a risk being with him. You knew what could happen, you just hoped and prayed in your heart  that it wouldn't. That's part of the whole deal. If you knew that you were just going to get your heart broken, you wouldn't have taken a risk and told the cute drummer that you had a hardcore crush on him. Where's the fun in that? Playing it safe has it's moments, that's for sure, but sometimes you have to take the risk. You're going to take that risk again and again. It's okay.

It doesn't seem like it now, but things will get better. Right now, it probably seems like you should have run out of tears to cry and you should take out stock in Kleenex and Pillsbury Frosting, judging by how much of each you've gone through during this whole ordeal. It seems like NOBODY will ever make you feel like he did, and you'll never want anybody else because they could hang the freaking moon, but they won't ever be him. But there is a light at the end of the tunnel. There will be a day, many days in fact, where you don't cry. There will be days when you don't eat an entire tub of frosting and use an entire box of Kleenexes during your late night tear-sessions. And believe it or not, there will be days when your heart doesn't feel like it's in a million pieces. Now, be forewarned that there are terrible days interspersed with the good days. And that may happen for quite awhile. But someday, someone is going to come along, and they're going to have the magic glue that puts your heart back together. And while a piece of your heart will always be etched with the name of your first love, the magic glue person will love you in the exact way that you loved your first.

Keep your chin up sunshine. There's always gotta be some rain before you see the rainbow.

To Whom It May Concern

Please know that I'm trying. Trying really hard, as a matter of fact, to work through my emotions, my demons, my struggles. Please know that it's not you, well not completely anyway. You didn't ask for this, I know that, but neither did I. I don't get like this for your attention, or your sympathy, or your pity. I could live without all of that. I don't know why these emotions and thoughts come and go like they do, but I guess that's part of having a first love. A whole new experience that, unfortunately, ended really badly and left me very damaged. But please know that I'm trying every single day to work through it and get better. And please know that when I say things like "we shouldn't be friends" or "you'd be better off without me in your life," it's simply me trying to prevent you from having to deal with my mess, because that's not your job. I hope that someday these emotional swings stop, and we can just be the best friends that I so desperately want us to be. But right now, it's still just really hard. Harder than most anything I've ever had to deal with. But I'm trying. Please don't forget that.

A Penny for your Thoughts

Do you ever find yourself sitting around, thinking about all the "what if's" that life presents to us? This has been my life lately. Lots of thinking about the "what if's," mostly pertaining to a certain person in my life. I don't know if it's just how my brain works or what, but I hate the fact that in most situations that don't work out, not just this one that has been at the forefront of my mind most recently, I'm never going to know what could have been. I feel like my discouragement at that fact is a commonly shared thing. Maybe it's meant to be that way, because knowing how something may have worked out makes it harder to deal with the fact that it didn't work out. Or maybe it's the world's way of letting us pretend that we still get the happily-ever-after we wanted (and trust me, I think about that aspect of the above-mentioned situation way more often than I'm proud of.) In this time of my life, so many things are changing so rapidly, and I find myself lost in my thoughts, particularly those "what if" thoughts. Sometimes it's great to envision my happily-ever-after, but most of the time I just get very depressed that I'm never going to get said happily-ever-after and I spend the night crying into my vodka lemonades (my latest drink of choice.) I try to keep myself busy and otherwise mentally occupied so my mind doesn't have as many chances to wander to that certain person mentioned above, but lately my efforts have been for naught. I saw a quote on Pinterest the other day that read "If you can't get someone off your mind, they are probably supposed to be there." But that doesn't help me figure out what to do when my brain is being suffocated by thoughts of said person, and the tear-inducing "what if's." Sigh. Any advice on what to do would be greatly appreciated.

Au Revoir.

Reverse Bucket-List

I've been wanting to write a post for a few days now, but inspiration has not been striking me. I usually have something going on in my life that I can write about, or I just get a really good idea about something interesting to write, but that hasn't been the case lately. SOOO, I turned to Pinterest. And I found a pin titled "30 Blog Post Ideas for When You Feel Uninspired." Perfect for me. One of the suggestions was to write about your "reverse bucket list:" not things you want to do in your life before you kick it, but things that you've already done. Lucky for me, I've got both a "Bucket List" and a "Finished Bucket List" Pinterest board, so I am going to pull some things off of the latter and use them as inspiration for this post- to share some of the awesome things that I've been privileged to do in my short 22 years of life!! Here we go.

1. Catch a Bride's Bouquet
- This is actually kind of a funny story. In my life, I have caught the bouquet at a wedding reception 3 times. The best part: I was 8 years old when I caught two of said-bouquets. Yes, eight years old. I don't know if I've addressed the enormity of my Struck family in a previous post, but basically, it's a huge family. My dad is one of 10 kids, and I am one of 32 grandchildren. I'm also the second youngest grandchild, so I've got LOTS of cousins that were getting married when I was young. The summer when I was 8, my cousin Hillary and my cousin Amanda both got married about 3 weeks apart. I was a little twerp running around in the cute dresses my mom made me, braids in my hair, and dancing like a maniac. And because I wanted to be just like all the older girls, I made my way to the dance floor when the bride was getting ready to throw the bouquet. When I caught the bouquet at Hillary's wedding, my family just thought it was "cute." But when I caught the bouquet again at Amanda's wedding about 3 weeks later, my aunts started telling my mom that she needed to start sewing me a wedding dress, because I was obviously going to get married sometime soon. (Seriously, aunts, I WAS EIGHT.) I was in high school when I caught the third bouquet, also at a cousin's wedding (unfortunately, that one ended in divorce. Maybe that's why I am still super single despite all these bouquets I've caught.)

2. Spend the Night at an Aquarium
- I was in Girl Scouts from kindergarten until I graduated from high school. Being in Girl Scouts was awesome, and I got to do lots of awesome stuff that I for sure wouldn't have gotten to do if I wasn't in Scouts. Going to summer camp, going on two road-trips around Iowa two summers in a row, selling a bazillion boxes of cookies, etc. When I was in second grade, my mom, another girl from my troop and her mom, and I made our way to Omaha, NE on a Friday night for an adventure at the Henry Doorly Zoo. And YES, we got to spend the night in the aquarium. We also got to go on a night-hike around the zoo and see all the animals at night, ride on the carousel, and see the newly-opened (at the time) Desert Dome exhibit. My only complaint about spending the night in the aquarium is that penguins are PARTY ANIMALS at night. Very LOUD party animals.

3. Have a Best Friend Who Will Never Let Me Down
- I consider myself VERY fortunate, because I've got more than one best friend who I know will always be there for me. Amy Jo (who I wrote a post about earlier) has been there for me since 1999, that's the last century dudes! She's always supported everything I want to do, and has been one of my biggest cheerleaders, and I know that that is going to continue as we go through life (we always joke that we are going to be the rebel-rousers at the nursing home someday.) I'm also super fortunate to have made two more best friends during my time at college: Kam and KT.
Kam is kind of like my Yoda- I turn to him when I need sincere advice, when I need someone to remind me that they believe in me and love me, or when I need someone to tell me to stop being dramatic. (He's really good at that part.) We also have a LOT in common when it comes to the music we listen to, so he's become my concert buddy- he's been with me at every single concert I've attended in my life. He's also super smart and talented, and has been helping me plan curriculum for my new teaching job (not going to lie, I get a little bitter when I sit and think about how to do something for days, and Kam can just come up with a really good idea off the top of his head. Maybe I should have him just come help me in my classrooms for a few days this summer.)
KT is a wonderful human being- there is so much that I went through this last year that I couldn't have gotten through if it weren't for her. She makes me laugh and smile when I just wanted to cry. She also spent a fair amount of time sitting with me in the Edson bathroom while I sobbed my eyes out, and just reminded me that things are going to be okay. It's also nice to know that I'm always going to hear a happy "Miss Kelsey!" exclamation whenever she sees me! I already miss her like crazy, but it will be a lot of fun hanging out when I get my own place next year!

4. Donate my Hair to Locks of Love
- I donated a 13 inch ponytail to Locks of Love the summer before I started 4th grade. I had had long hair for most of my life, so the removal of that 13 inch ponytail was a drastic change. Since then, my hair really hasn't grown long anymore- it gets to my shoulders and kind of just stays there.

5. Feel Like a Barbie Doll
- This happened my senior year of high school. My dad got really sick when I was a senior, and couldn't work. Money was really tight, our home was really stressful, and I was a wreck. I had planned on going to prom with my friends, but in a typical dramatic Kelsey fashion, I told my family that I wouldn't go because we couldn't afford to get a dress and a hair appointment and flowers and the dinner ticket and all of that stuff. A more appropriate title for this one should be "feel like Cinderella," because I got blessed with two fairy godmothers: Juli Kwikkel and Jodi Thiesen. Juli is my mom's boss, and when she found out that I wasn't going to prom because we didn't have the money, she wouldn't hear of it. I wore one of her daughter's dresses, and she bought my corsage to wear with my dress. Jodi was my guidance counselor, and was well informed of the situation happening at home. An alum of my high school had reached out, wanting to know if there were any girls who wanted to go to prom but couldn't afford to get their hair done. She ended up giving me a whole make-over because Jodi gave her my name and told her about the stuff happening at home. I got my hair high-lighted, and got a super make-over the day of prom. Those two ladies made sure that I would get a chance to experience prom with my friends, and getting made over like a Barbie doll was a pretty fun time.

There's still so many things I want to do and experience in my life, but it's nice to take a step back and talk about all the cool things that have already happened in my life. Be on the look-out for more posts of this nature in the future, and maybe some posts about some of the things I want to do.

As always, thank you for reading these posts. If you ever have any suggestions of things I can write about, or things you want me to write about, shoot them my way!

Ciao!

And so it begins.

The last week has been very momentous in my life. That's right, readers. You are feasting your eyes upon my first blog post as a college graduate. (Please, hold the applause. It really isn't that big of a deal.) Let's keep some order while I outline the craziness that this last week (and really, this last semester) has been in the life on me, myself, and I.

1. Student teaching has come and gone. What a crazy experience (and I mean crazy in a good sense.) I posted the night before my first day at my first placement about jumping into this unknown experience and seeing what it had to offer. I was so scared that I was going to fail, but I was also cognoscente (I just really like that word) of all the help and support that I had surrounding me while on this roller coaster called student teaching. I'm going to be straight-up with you guys here: my first few weeks of student teaching were really hard. I cried a lot, I felt terrible about my preparation as a teacher, and I wanted to quit. The worst part wasn't that I thought I was bad at teaching, it was that I was so afraid that the career I had wanted to do for the greater majority of my life wasn't going to work out. I remember a conversation with a friend where he casually asked me how student teaching was going, thinking he was going to get a casual "Oh, it's fine" answer. Instead he got LONNG snaps about how terrible I felt about it, how much I hated it, and how much I wanted to quit. That friend told me to remember how big of an adjustment I was making- going from student to teacher. And that friend also told me that he knew I could do it, and that quitting would be a huge mistake. The most important thing I remember from that conversation is him saying "it's going to get better." Well, he was right. It did get better. I slowly became more and more comfortable in the role of teacher, I got to know my students, and I really began having a ton of fun. It's crazy to think how close I grew with the other teachers and students at each of my placements in just 8 short weeks. I sobbed the entire way home last Thursday after my last day at Spencer Middle School because I was just going to miss those kids so much. If I can bond that much with students in 8 weeks, I'm pretty sure I'm going to be a crazy wreck when I have to say goodbye to my own students. Student teaching taught me a lot about myself- not just about myself as an educator, but myself as a person. I'm not going to share a lot of that because frankly you guys probably don't care and I would like to move onto the next point. If you're really invested and want to know *ALL* the things I learned about myself throughout my student teaching process, that's a conversation we can have (maybe, depending on who you are.)

2. I am happy to say that I am gainfully employed for the 2016-2017 school year! This didn't happen in the last week, but since I haven't put that bit of information out on this blog for all 6 of you guys to read, I'll put it on here now. I actually got a job in the district where I did my first student teaching placement, which I'm really excited about. I LOVED the other music teachers, and the administration impressed me from the start, which made taking the job really easy when it was offered to me. I will be a K-6 general music teacher. Yes, you read that right. Not a band director. General music teacher. I'm equal parts super excited and super terrified for this endeavor, mainly because I still feel like I have absolutely no freaking CLUE what I am doing. I've got lots of good ideas bouncing around in my head, and once I get them organized I think I'll feel a lot more confident about the whole thing, but right now I'm just overwhelmed and chaotic. But it will be alright.

3. Saturday, I walked across the stage in Siebens Fieldhouse, shook Fred Moore's hand, and officially graduated from Buena Vista University. Everyone's been congratulating me and stuff, but it doesn't feel real yet. I don't know what it is. I know I will start to feel real when I get my actual diploma, when my teaching license is issued, when I find out how much those monthly student loan payments are going to be, and definitely once the school year gets closer. But for now I just feel like I'm floating around aimlessly- no longer a student, but I don't feel like a teacher necessarily either. I don't know. I wasn't really that sad on graduation day until I saw my underclassmen friends at the Baccalaureate service, then I got sad. I don't want to leave them. I'm only going to be 30 minutes away, but still. That brings me to the next point.

4. Everything is about to change with my friends. I know it's going to happen, I don't think I can stop it, and it sucks. It already has changed. My friends have gone home for the summer, where they have their own lives, friends, etc, etc, etc. We won't see each other for months, we don't talk as much as we used to, and it's just got me feeling very lonely. Everything else in my life has gone all fruit basket upset on me, and those relationships are things I don't want to change. I know I'll make new friends in my colleagues and when I move to another town. But too much is changing all at once and it's just very overwhelming. I've yet to find a good way to deal with it (and if anybody out there has any ideas, let me know.)

That's about all the thoughts in my head for right now. Last week was long and full of happenings, so this week I'm hoping to chill out a bit and take it easy before my long summer of curriculum planning and French horn playing begins. Sigh.

Did everybody say what a good day that it was??

Guys, it finally happened. After months of anticipation, excitement, and waiting, I FINALLY got to see Jukebox the Ghost live in concert. February 20, 2016 is going to be a day that I'm not going to forget (mainly because I'm blogging about it and it will be on the internet forever, so if the day comes where I do forget, I can just read about it on the internet.) You are about to get a [mostly] full play by play of the events once we left Storm Lake and journeyed to the north part of Omaha for the concert. Get excited kids, because this blog is gonna be a good one.

So, as I've mentioned in previous posts, Kam was going to be attending this concert with me. This was great because I wouldn't even know JtG existed if it wasn't for him, and it's really hard in our busy schedules for find time to hang out with me student teaching and what not, so I was really looking forward to getting to spend some time with him along with seeing this amazing band that changed my life. Kam's friend Alejandra ended up getting a ticket to the concert and came along with us as well. The more the merrier, right? We left SL a little after 3:00 and began making our way towards the big city (in comparison to other cities, Omaha really isn't that big, but I'm from SL, so to me, it's a big city. Back to the story ---->) My bargain with Kam is that I would pay for his ticket to the concert if he drove, because this small-town girl does NOT do interstate driving or city driving (although I should probably get over that fear and get some practice doing both of those things.) The trip got off to an....adventurous start when Kam got pulled over for speeding by the Ida County sheriff. Luckily, that charming son of a gun managed to get away with a written warning. He was VERY careful to drive the speed limit the rest of the way there and home, however ;) ;) So we eventually made it to Omaha, got to "North Omaha" and found a place to park. As we were walking from the truck towards the venue, the Waiting Room Lounge, we could actually hear JtG doing their sound check. Soooo naturally we ran over there, looked through the window, and there they were. JtG, in all their glorious perfection, doing the sound check. It was at this point that I got VERY excited for what the night had in store for me. Food was the first priority before the concert, so we started roaming looking for some place to acquire nourishment. There was this pizza place that smelled seriously amazing, but we weren't willing to commit to the 30 minute wait, so that didn't happen. Another restaurant in our price range was also very busy, so we ended up eating at Subway. (I know what you are all thinking, you guys were in OMAHA and you ate at Subway. Yes, we did. Move on already.)

After the foods, we made our way back down to the venue for the LONG wait for the doors to open at 8:00 PM. It got very cold, and my biggest complaint was that I didn't make the wisest choice when it came to footwear and my feet were literally frozen. Kam assured me that it would all be worth it because we were at the front of the line and that meant we'd get AH-MAZING seats for the concert itself. As more and more people showed up, and the line grew longer and longer, I had to admit to myself that he was right (although, I'd never actually admit that to him. Lawlz.) The coolest part of the whole standing in line thing was that we ACTUALLY SAW JtG walking across the street from this super fancy and classy restaurant to get into the venue. It actually wasn't nearly as cool as I'm making it out to be right now, but #details. 8:00 finally arrived, the doors opened, and we were that much closer to the concert. I'm convinced one of the greatest parts of being 21, besides you know, legally being able to buy and consume alcohol, is the fact that when you go to any sort of event at a bar/club, you get a nifty little bracelet that screams "I'm 21 or over, huzzah!" whereas all the young ones, such as Kam and Alejandra, got GIANT, and I mean GIANT, black X's on each of their hands that scream "I'm young!" Being that we were like the fourth people in line, we bee-lined for the front, and we were literally standing right on the edge of the stage. We decided (and when I say we, I mostly mean Kam decided) that we would buy the majority of our merchandise before the show even started, because that would avoid the whole long-lines thing after the show, and then we would be well-prepared to get everything signed by the band when the concert was finito. So, we did that whole "here take all of my money and my first born child for all this concert merchandise" thing, and then it was just....a matter of time before the concert started. (See what I did there.. because JtG has a song called "A Matter of Time...." get it? get it?) Anyways...
FINALLY. 9;00 had arrived, and the opening band came out on stage. Allow me to share with you the first observations I was making in my head as the opener (there a band called Mainland btdubs) came onto the stage:
1. Holy toledo, that is one attractive bass player.
2. This lead guitar guy looks like he walked out of the 1950s.
3. But seriously, that bass player.
So, if you can't tell, the bass player was my favorite part of Mainland, and I took a bunch of pictures of him and pretty much just fangirl stared at him the whole time. To be completely honest, I wasn't expecting much from the opening band, because a) I didn't pay or travel 3 hours to see them and b) see reason A. But these guys were really good. Really good. They finished their set, I stole the set list off the stage after they left, and then it was.... ONLY A MATTER OF TIME before JtG would hit the stage. (That was a punny reference to a JtG song. Maybe I thought it was punny, you probably thought it was lame, but this is my blog so I do what I want.)
Finally, they came onto the stage. Jukebox the Ghost. They were getting all their equipment and cords and other rockstar things that you have to prepare ready before they started their set. Like the total fangirl I am, I had my camera at the ready, snapping pictures left and right of them getting ready to do the whole rockstar thing. Tommy Siegel (he's a guy in the band, duh) saw me with my camera snapping shots, AND ACTUALLY STOPPED WHAT HE WAS DOING TO POSE FOR MY PICTURE. Yes, that actually happened. It was magical. And, I was about 3 feet away from Ben Thornewill, the most attractive member of JtG. The girl standing behind-ish me was like "Hi Ben, how are you?" And, he must have thought it was me asking...BECAUSE HE LOOKED RIGHT INTO MY EYES AND WAS LIKE "HOW ARE YOU?" WE MADE SERIOUS EYE CONTACT IN THAT MOMENT, AND IT WAS MAGICAL. Okay, so they got all their stuff set up, and then it was time. They came out and started their set. I was so ready.
I'm not going to go into a lot of details about the concert because I'm pretty sure we all know how a concert works: I fangirl like crazy, the band sings songs, I sing along very loudly and take lots of pictures, and then they finish. That's pretty much how the concert went. I will mention one song specifically just because it was cool. In one of my earlier posts about JtG, I specifically mentioned the song "The Great Unknown" because it just like punched me in the feels a lot. Apparently, this is not a song that they guys sing at live shows very often. But, wait for it, THEY SANG IT AT THE OMAHA SHOW. I repeat, THEY SANG IT AT THE OMAHA SHOW. Of course, I video-taped the entire thing, sang along, and cried throughout the entire thing. I lucked out, that's for sure. The coolest thing about this concert is that I was seeing this band that had such a profound impact on me from the first time I listened to them, and I made direct eye contact with each member of the band at least 20 times during the set. It's hard for me to describe what seeing these guys live meant to me, but it was amazing, and I'm just going to leave it at that.
After the show was over, we made another run to the merch table, mainly to buy some stuff from Mainland (they were the opener, remember?) We got to talk to those guys and they were super chill. I'm really into their music and I hope to see them again sometime soon. But, I was mostly excited to meet the members of JtG. I got to have a mini, sort of "hey the show was awesome" conversation with each of them, get some of my merch signed, and get a picture taken with each member of the band. A perfect ending to my first indie-band concert experience.
Now, I'm going to be honest. The drive home sucked. We didn't leave Omaha until after midnight, and it's a 3 hour drive back to Storm Lake. I was on a student-teaching schedule, which meant that I was used to going to bed at about 9:00 pm, and I didn't even get into my house until 4 AM. I woke up the next morning extremely fatigued, sore beyond repair from the car ride, and I sounded like I smoked two packs a day. But, it was more than worth it. Because I got to see my second favorite band with my first favorite person (that's you Kam.) I can't wait until I get the opportunity to see them again, and hopefully it will be SOON!!

Top Left: Ben Thornewill (he plays piano and sings. He's also my future husband but he doesn't know that yet.)
Top Right: Jesse Kristin (drums)
Bottom Left: Tommy Siegel (much more attractive in person, I promise.)