Arctic Monkeys

When tickets went on sale for the Arctic Monkeys, one of Serafina's favorite bands, I decided to scoop up three tickets.  It was the farthest in advance I've ever bought concert tickets.  On the checkout screen, it said "congratulations! Your show is in 380 days".  Ha!  Over a year in advance!  I figured if she no longer liked the band when the show finally came around, I could sell the tickets.  Tastes change when you're a teenager, after all.  We gifted her the tickets last Christmas with an Arctic Monkeys sweatshirt.  As the date finally approached, she decided to invite her dance friend Karin (who also join us for her birthday dinner).  I wasn't sure if her folks would be okay with me taking her to San Francisco on a school night, but luckily she was allowed to come along.  The show was at the Chase Center where we saw Lizzo last year.  I pretty much repeated all the steps - parked in the same lot, ate pizza at the same restaurant, even stopped at the crazy Restoration Hardware store to take some pictures on the roof. 

 

Here are a couple of those pictures. 

After being sooooo far away at Taylor and Beyoncé, it was a delight to find we had very good seats.  Since I bought the tickets so long ago, I forgot that we were nice and close.  

The girls wandered around and bought t-shirts while I enjoyed the opening band.  Arctic Monkeys put on a great show and the girls learned the important art of moving up as close as you can, even if you don't have tickets for those seats as long as you don't get kicked out by security.  

 

Driving Dad's Bimmer

Tom took my car to the mountains to have a guys weekend with his friends.  We were left no other choice!  Leo had to practice driving after all.  We sent him these pictures and surprisingly, Tom did not have a heart attack.  

 

Dancing with Karen Chuang

When we were at the Taylor Swift show, Serafina mentioned that one of the backup dancers, Karen Chuang, was also a dance teacher that she had taken class from during a convention.  This was a pretty cool fact.  Well, it got a whole lot cooler when her studio invited Karen to teach the weekly Master Class Serafina attends.  

Here's the contemporary dance combo they learned during class.  

 

Serafina's Birthday Weekend

It felt like Serafina spent almost her entire birthday weekend at the dance studio, but luckily, those are people she loves to be around.  There was a special hip hop choreographer visiting for the weekend to teach a Master Class Friday night, and then choreograph her Senior Hip Hop Crew routine and her large Hip Hop team routines Friday, Saturday and Sunday.  

Here's a post from the dance studio of all the kids with the choreographer.  

Saturday morning, her actual birthday, she had some time in the morning to have special birthday donuts and open a few gifts, including these cute pajama pants that look like Mousse. 

That night, after back-to-back choreography sessions, her friend Karin came out to dinner with us.  Here they are post-dance at the restaurant.  They were initially sitting on their own, but decided they could tolerate sitting with the rest of us instead. 

After dinner, we had Crumbl cookies because those are her favorite and they opened one closer to our house. 

After cookies, she opened a few more presents, including this Squishmallow from Leo.  The name was in inside joke and it cracked them both up immensely.  

Sunday? Yep, you guessed it. More dance. 

But Sunday night we got to celebrate with Nana.  I offered to make her a cake but she politely declined.  

On Monday, she had the day off from school because of Labor Day and finally the day off from dance.  She spent time with her sweet dance friends.  

 I think overall she had a pretty good birthday, but it definitely didn't feel as celebratory as we would have liked because of her dance commitments.  I told her we would make it up to her with a Sweet Sixteen party.