Our trip to Birmingham with Steve & Sarah this past weekend was AWESOME!

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On our way we surprised Sarah with a trip to Archivers...(And yes, both husbands were good sports and didn't complain TOO much while feeling a little out of place!)

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Once we were back on the road Matt was the first to realize that we were about to be driving into another time zone...Yeah my heart kinda stopped for a couple quick seconds! We needed to get to B'ham about 4:30 so we could change and get to The Cheesecake Factory by 5:30 and somehow in all my planning I'd failed to remember that BIRMINGHAM is in another TIME ZONE! But lucky for us, this time change worked in our favor...And actually if I HAD thought of it earlier and factored it into our driving time we would've been late...Thank you Central Time Zone for giving us an extra hour and saving my tail!!

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As we got closer to the city I passed the directions up to Steve so that he could navigate for Matt...(But little did HE know there was no way I could relinquish TOTAL control - I kept my own directions in the back for me and Sarah to chime in whenever the need arose!) We checked into our hotel, change clothes and headed out for dinner!

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So we get to The Cheesecake Factory right at 5:30...Certainly it couldn't be TOO busy by then, right?? Uh yeah. Let's just say it was only a TWO HOUR wait! Fortunately for us though, I know a little secret and walked us straight to a table and sat down! We all thoroughly enjoyed our meal (once we made it through the 20 page menu!) and ordered up PLENTY of cheesecake to go for our after-concert snack!!

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Although it should have only been about a 15 minute drive from dinner to the concert we managed to turn it into quite an adventure. We needed to find gas somewhere, but finding ANYTHING in downtown B'ham is pretty near impossible. (Think, all streets with numbered names that have both a North & South version blocks away from each other. Oh and did I mention that they're all ONE WAY!?) Finally a cop directing traffic "pointed" us in the direction of a gas station. Yeah. Can we say sketchville?! I'm talking like the kind of place you think only exists in movies. And of course, you had to actually go INSIDE to pay! We got just enough gas to get us to another gas station and got the heck out of there!

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And then there's the Trans Siberian Orchestra concert- The whole reason for our trip! Unfortunately there's just really no way to describe their concerts...There's just no way possible to comprehend the musical drive and the mind-blowing lights/flames/fire until you've experienced it first-hand! Since this was our second concert we kept looking over at Steve and Sarah just to see their reaction and the look on their faces...So awesome!!

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Before heading home on Sunday we took a little detour up to Commerce (Georgia) to do a little shopping at the outlets. We ate, shopped, and ate some more before settling in for the last leg of our trip. In my pre-trip planning I had typed out directions to and between each of our stops and with the exception of a mysterious non-existent U-turn, they had proven flawless. So the question remains, why on earth did the guys decide it would be better just to follow little squiggly lines on a map than to actually use the line by line directions?? Honestly! I guess it's just that whole "adventure" thing that they crave!

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So anyways, after multiple U-turns, we all made it home safely. Of course we had a good trip, ate some great food and saw an awesome concert, but in the end we unanimously decided the best part of the entire weekend was definitely just getting to spend two uninterrupted days with amazing friends!