matchbox 20 concert and a tale of lost tickets

before i share this story, you all need to know that if you ask ANY of my friends, they will tell you i am THE most organsied person they know. you need to know this fact because it's crucial to the story and i haven't known y'all very long, so how would you know that i'm very organised. well, you wouldn't, so i'm telling you.

so, remember when i won matchbox 20 concert tickets? the package included flights and a night's accommodation in auckland.

yep, here i am all badly lit at 7.30 on a monday morning. bad light, bad hair, but still with all the winning prizes - happy, happy, happy.

that was over a month ago, and the tickets, vouchers, taxi chits and other assorted essential paperwork have sat in an envelope in my desk since then. until it came time to pack them. which i DID!!!

HOWEVER.....on tuesday when i opened the envelope at the airport to pay for the cab, the CONCERT tickets weren't there! tara says 'you're not serious' (coz sometimes i'm not), but in this case i was! while i get on the phone to the arena where the concert was being held, tara runs out of the airport into the middle of the road to flag down our cab who had since picked up a new fare. said new passenger kindly obliged by getting out of the cab so tara could grovel on the floor to see if i had accicentally flicked the tickets out of the envelope.

i had not.

so i leave our predicament in the hands of the lovely nadine at the arena who was going to call the promoter. i get daughter #2 to text me the DJs cell phone number (at the radio station running the promotion) and we get on the plane. what else could i do? i beat myself up for about 10 minutes, coz i KNEW they wouldn't be lost, that they would be somewhere TOTALLY obvious. i just didn't know the exact location of OBVIOUS. but once you're on a plane, what can u do. nothing, well, except eat the free lollies they give you. (i'm a sucker for lollies, especially free ones).

we had got an early morning flight so were able to fit in an entire day's shopping before the concert. it was tara's idea to go shopping, but she doesn't really look like she's up for it does she...

tara? wake up girl, there's shopping to be done!!!

meanwhile on the other side of the booth, i'm rearing to go (or is that raring to go?) either way, i'm going!!! (BAD backlight situation happening...)

we thought about buying some sunnies...

maybe not...

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ....


so we finally get to our hotel. the room is very cute, but with THE most impractical fancy eatin' table you ever did see...

and don't get me started on the mini bar food. this little lot will set you back NZ$78 if you happen to get the munchies in the middle of the night...

while we spent the day shopping, the big hearted folks at MOREFM wellington AND auckland are running themselves ragged to get me replacement concert tickets. i had also arranged to meet the promoter at the arena, so i figured SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE would come up with tickets for me.

isn't it nice to know there are still so many good people in the world?

i was told to meet the promoter at the arena at 4.30, but by the time we got there, i had received calls from the radio station in wellington AND auckland to say that they had secured two more tickets for us - YAY! only problem was, i had to collect them from the station in auckland within the next 30 minutes (at that point i was probably 1 hour away in peak traffic and we were on foot - STILL wheeling our suitcases, by which time were much heavier from all the shopping).

these amazing people didn't miss and beat and sent the tickets to our hotel on a one hour courier (angels at work here people!)

see, here's the extra 2 they couriered to the hotel...so we start getting ready for the concert. i get out the cute evening bag i knew i would be taking to the concert, open it up to pop in my lip gloss and what do i find...

i am SO ORGANISED, that when i was packing on monday night for the trip, i had put the tickets in the bag i knew i would be using.


so now i have FOUR FREE TICKETS!!!


so there's nothing left to do but rock up to the arena and give away our 2 spare free tickets to the first people we see in line. which we did.

here's JJ with his free tickets. once he realised we weren't messing with his head and he did the whole hand-over-mouth 'oh my god you're kidding' clap-his-hands-on-the-sides-of-his-head thing, literally TEAR UP on the spot then embrace tara and i in bear hugs, he graciously accepted the tickets. once inside, he managed to find us and buy us a glass of wine each.

here's the wine. a very nice chardonnay it was too.
and as for the concert? ROB ROCKS THE HOUSE!!!

awesome.....

totally awesome

so, there you go. quite the day, but with a happy ending, for more than one group of folks!

back on the home front, DH took daughter #4 to be enrolled as a girl guide and here are a couple of pics.

i'm a guide now!