American Country Music Awards

Mike was lucky enough to be invited to the ACMA awards that were to be hosted here in Arlington.  He had called me and told me about them but then said “I don’t know if we will be able to go” with us not having family close means finding babysitters and people we trust to watch our 3 very busy kiddos…when we talked about it we figured out that if we were going to be able to go, our neighbor boys would be the only people we would trust to leave the kiddos with.  We asked them and they were up for the challenge.  They were actually excited!  So Mike and I got a fancy date alone to the award show.  We got ready and left to head to the stadium which was about 45 minutes away from our house.  As per we were a little behind with getting out the door and we were a bit nervous we were going to miss the cut off time to our seats.  Luckily we got there, had time to get a drink and then got to our seats. 

The people watching was amazing.  There was attire from street clothes to formal dresses.  Most of the guys were in jeans and boots, you can’t see it in the picture but I was able to rock boots with my dress and be country chic.  It was a fun experience, there were a lot of stars present that we got to “see” from about 100 yards away.  It was very hard to hear anything because the stadium was so loud with everyone cheering, even during the performances it was really loud and hard to hear.  Watching and listening to the behind the scenes stuff was a lot of fun.  The announcer would come on and give everyone a 1 minute warning…then he would count down and just before airtime with “30 seconds, 15 seconds, 10 seconds we need applause 5 seconds.”   There was also a 3 row section of dancing audience members for all the audience shots.  I watched them fascinated as they followed their “dance instructor” as she showed them when to dance, sway their arms, when to sing along, and when to act like they were on camera.  After they had used a section they would rotate everyone around and then after a couple times they would then send them on their way and new people would come in.  It was crazy to watch it on tv after we got home and see what the production looked like.  Also the presenters dresses looked much different in person vs on tv.  In person the sparkles were just really masking and looked like a big disco ball, on tv there was much more definition and honestly everyone looked even thinner…maybe it was hard to look thin on the biggest screen in a stadium.  We were also a part of making the American Flag during Alan Jackson’s song and tribute to our countries heroes.  Honestly that was the quietest the stadium was the whole night as everyone showed their respect and it was a very touching tribute.  I didn’t get to see it on tv as our DVD ran out of recording space and I haven’t had time to look it up.  Everyone said it looked really great.  We ended up leaving just before the end of the show to beat traffic and get home to our littles.  Thomas was already asleep, Elin was close behind and William who had napped off and on was up waiting for us when we got home.