KORN

Austin went to his first concert..KORN.  A couple of months ago Austin told us that he heard on the radio that the tickets were going on sale for Korn, so we went and bought 3 of them.  Austin has been so excited, waiting for this day to come!
The day of the concert, Vinnie got a call from a friend of his who works with the promoters that brought Korn up here.  The bass player, Fieldy was wanting to get a tattoo while he was up here and wanted it done by Vinnie that day.  Vinnie shuffled some appointments around and was able to get Fieldy in.  I took Austin down to the shop so he could meet Fieldy and get some picutres with him.

 While Vinnie was tattooing Fieldy, he was told that we would be "hooked up" for the concert.  That night when we arrived at the concert, Vinnie called his friend and they came down to a security door on the side of the building and let us in.  We avoided all lines and went straight to the front of the line for the meet and greet.  After the meet and greet we were able to go back by their dressing rooms and hang out until the concert started.  The lead singer of Korn; Jonathan Davis, does not like to have his picture taken and is super super shy.  During the meet and greet everyone was told absolutely no pictures, no cameras, no cell phones..period!  Well, while we were hanging out waiting for the concert to begin, Jonathan walked up to Austin and put his arm around him and said, "hurry, who has a camera?".  We hurry and pulled out the camera and got a picture.

Here are some more pictures of us with the drummer, Ray and another one with Fieldy.

When it was time for the band to go out on stage, we walked out with them and then went to the side of the stage and watched the concert from there.  I was so relieved that we were on the side of the stage because the concert was general admission and it looked like it was one big mosh pit, bodies being thrown everywhere, people getting smashed, etc...

Fieldy wore a Rebirth Tattoo shirt for part of the concert, that was really fun to see!  After the concert they gave Austin the guitar pick from Fieldy and he got 2 drumsticks from Ray.  One of them was used during the concert and the other was brand new.

It was so fun to watch Austin enjoy his first concert!

Movin' on out...

I am so excited!  The movers will be coming 3 months from today to pack up all of our stuff to ship it off to Salt Lake City, Utah.  I can't believe the time is finally here.  It was about 3 years ago that I sprung this big move on Vinnie.  I was pregnant with Sebastian, emotional, and feeling like I wished we had more family near us.  Vinnie came home from work one day and sat down next to me on the couch.  After sitting there for a few min trying to get up enough nerve to tell him what I was thinking, I finally spit it out;  "Honey, I don't want to live here anymore."  He looked at me and said, "In this house?"  I said "No, in this state."  His jaw dropped in a bit of a panic.  I explained to him about how far away our family was and that our kids were going to grow up not knowing their grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and so on.  I told him that I wanted to move to Utah.  After discussing it for a little bit and exploring all options, he was  on board.  We decided that we need to come up with a plan of action and set some dates and goals to make the big move.  Our original plan was to move the summer of 2009.  Well financially this just didn't work, so we pushed it back 1 more year and realized that we needed to get serious about this so we wouldn't have to push it back again.  We have been planning and saving and the time has finally come.  I can't believe that we are actually moving in 3 months.  These past 3 years we have been talking about this move and it seemed as though it was never going to get here and now it is just days away, really.  This is a busy household so our days seem to go pretty quick. 
The plan is to fly the little kiddos to New Mexico to stay with Vinnie's parents while we get everything done.  Austin will fly to Utah.  Vinnie and I are going to be driving the Alcan Highway  :) and heading on down to Utah.  There we will wait for our stuff to arrive at our house (from moving company shipping it).  The moving company said that it will take a minimum of about 10 days for our stuff to get there.  Once that is there, Vinnie, Austin, & I will drive down to New Mexico to get our other little ones.  We will stay there for a week or two and then drive back to Utah and get settled in.  While settling in to the house, we will also be getting the tattoo shop up and going.  We are leaving Rebirth Tattoo by Vinnie open here in Alaska.  There are 3 others artists working in there.  Vinnie will be doing some traveling back and fourth between Utah and Alaska to continue working on his clients that need their pieces finished, or even new projects that may want to get started.
Remodeling of the basement in our house in Utah will begin March 8th.  We are having it finished and that will be Austin's area.  He is pretty excited, he is already talking about what color of paint he wants and how he wants his room arranged.   
It is all coming together and I am praying that things go smoothly!  They have to, I have 3 months to make sure it does.  :)

More time anyone???

So I was going to try to set up my blog with some more history of events over the past few years but with this busy household that I have going I just can't seem to find the time.  So it looks like I will just be starting from here and moving forward so that way I can let our family know of this blog and you can all start to follow it. Things are going great here and things are falling into place.  We are looking forward to our move back to Utah this coming June.  We can't wait to be around family.  Vinnie talked to the people working in the shop here and let them know that we are moving and opening up another Rebirth Tattoo in SLC, Utah.  They were a bit shocked but happy for us at the same time.  Vinnie has now started letting his clients know as well.  He still plans to come back up to Alaska once a month to check on the business here and to work on his clients here.  We are heading to the tattoo convention in SLC next month....it will be nice to get the word out to watch for a "Grand Opening" this summer.