Hey, hey, hey and a happy Friday to you!

We are back in the swing of things and enjoying some wonderfully cool weather around here.

I’m still finishing up our trip posts before I get back to the usual.  A link to part I of our trip, if you missed it.

We spent the first leg of our trip with Pa’s sister.  The morning we were leaving her place, we went for a run around Lake Harriet.

We thought we had headed out early enough but we forgot it was Saturday…oh my, was it congested.  And with a stroller, it certainly made dodging people very exciting.

Still, a beautiful morning and I am so glad we went.  We ran around the lake once and then did a short out and back to get to 5 miles.  Even when vacation exhausts me, running gives me energy that I wouldn’t have otherwise.  It was also refreshing to see so many people out exercising.  We are lucky to see anyone else outside, let alone exercising, when we run in our little town.

We said goodbye to my sister-in-law and her husband (who we were meeting up with later in the evening) and headed to my parents who are about a half hour out of the cities.

Pa and I had been planning this trip since December…because the trip centered around seeing Coldplay on Saturday night.  We are huge Coldplay fans and even if you don’t love their music, the show itself is well worth it for the entertainment value.  Love them or hate them, Chris Martin and the other band members give one hundred percent to every performance they put on.

My parents were going to watch Lula and my sister’s son so we could all enjoy the concert sans kiddos.  Once we arrived, Lula immediately cozied up to my sister, Amy.

I think Lula was overwhelmed at this point- she was pretty quiet and seemed to be dragging and tired.  Additionally, as the time got closer to leaving her, I was getting more and more anxious and emotional.  I’m a big baby when it comes to leaving my daughter and I have only ever done it once before that evening.  My mom was clever and took her from me and distracted her so we could make a quick getaway.

We went out to eat before the show and enjoyed some adult time with our respective siblings and their husbands.

There were two opening acts for Coldplay and no one in our party had any interest in seeing either one of them, so we took our time getting to the show.  I called my mom around 8 PM to see how Lula was doing.  She wasn’t sleeping yet and was pretty upset, but I knew she was in good hands and that we’d be seeing her in a few hours, so I relaxed and enjoyed myself.

We found our seats and got comfortable, taking a few photos and getting our bearings.

About a minute after Pa took this photo, cue theme music from Back To The Future (Coldplay’s introduction on this tour) and the show began!

In a word, it was fantastic.

On this tour, Coldplay distributed bracelets before every show that were synchronized to light up during certain songs.  I was very impressed and it was a clever gimmick that the audience loved.

Another neat part of the show featured an alternate stage embedded somewhere in the auditorium, which turned out to be below where we were sitting.

Chris Martin is the one in pink, and after the crowd went wild as he walked onto the stage, he commented that, “this is perhaps the best welcome any man has ever gotten who is wearing a pink t-shirt.”

The show wrapped up and we made our way back to my parent’s house.  It turned out that Lula didn’t get to bed until after 9 PM, this with minimal napping during the day, so we knew the poor thing was exhausted.

I went into her room to feed her and it took some time to get her back down but I’m glad I did and that she knew that we were back.

The alarm went off at 7 AM and I considered staying right where I was and going back to sleep but about 5 minutes later, I heard Lula start to cry and knew that I was up for the day and that Pa and I would be heading out for a run very quickly.

We had an extremely quiet and cool four mile run around a small lake with a nice bike path and once again, felt great for getting out there and getting it done.

We headed back to the house and had a nice day.  Part III of our trip (the last part) coming up soon!

Have a great day!