all eyes on me in the centre of the ring just like a circus

Last weekend I headed to Melbourne to have a girls night out in Melbourne with Emma, at Rod Laver Arena, to see

"The Circus,

starring

BRITNEY SPEARS"

Thursday:

Oh how I hate you Jetstar.

Thursday night, my flight to Melbourne was scheduled for 5.45pm (well technically, when I booked it was scheduled for like, 2.30pm but had since been changed like 4 times, anyway...). At 4pm I received a text from jetstar telling me it had been delayed til 7pm. Bugger. I let Matt and Nic know (as they were taking me to the airport), and they picked me up a little bit later than planned. On the way to the airport, I forgot my phone, we had to turn back after being a few blocks away from my house. Then we got held up in traffic for aaaages as there was an accident on the bridge. Using nic's iPhone, I checked the estimated departure time. It had been delayed another 25 minutes (til 7.25pm), which in this case was actually kind of lucky seeing as how because of the crash we didn't make it to the airport til 6.45pm. So sitting at the airport...waiting....an announcement is made....the flight is now not leaving til 7.50 pm (ohhh i hate you jetstar!!!). Eventually at 7.35pm we start to board the plane....and do not leave til roughly 8pm....2 hours and 15 minutes later than scheduled. SIGH.

But I did make it to Melbourne. And Andrew did pick me up. And then it took forever to get to his house as there were roadworks on the freeway...(a night of delays!!).

But we made it!!

Friday:

Friday the 13th (Spooky) started early when I heard Ethan come downstairs at 6am...I did not get out of bed til about 8pm though, even though the whole time I could hear Ethan telling Asher to be quiet because "Aunty Camilla is sleeping". he he he. I got up, played with the boys, ate breakfast (Ethan wanted some so he got his own bowl of second breakfast, lucky thing!), and then I showered.

I then checked my phone and had a text from Emma saying that she could not find the tickets for that night. uh oh. never a good thing! She kept looking, did not find them, but found out that because we had reserved seats that we could go to the box office and get replacement tickets (phew!). I played with the boys some more, marevelled at how quick Asher is when he is crawling, was amazed at the amount of energy Ethan has (he just never stops!!), and then Emma and Tessa came over to play.

Tessa and Ethan love each other so much, it is adorable, they were so cute playing together, and they were both so good with bubba Asher too! When all three kiddies started to get tired, I left with Emma and Tessa to head to their place, stopping at maccas on the way for a soft serve (my first experience of Tessa and icecream - she just loves the stuff, and is so cute eating it, she just holds the cone at her mouth, and lets the icecream melt in to her mouth, making the biggest mess!).

When we got to their place, we met up with Eddy, played with Tessa (who out of nowhere became rather attached to me "Milla, Milla, Milla, Wheres Milla?, Milla Milla Milla" - so cute!) and got ready for the night.

Emma and I headed off to have dinner at a Japanese restaurant in Hardware lane (I had the most delicious sesame mustard coated beef with snowpea salad - yum) and we then caught a taxi to Rod Laver Arena for the show! When we arrived we lined up in the 'lost ticket' line, felt less embarrassed about losing our tickets when the girl in front of us told us she had gotten her tickets mailed to the wrong address, waited in line laughing at all the teeny booper outfits that people had on, along with the crazy high heels, short shorts, mini skirts and dresses, overkill of fake tan and bleached hair. We EVENTUALLY (it took aages) got our new tickets and headed in to the arena. Once inside, we scouted out the merchandise, and were super impressed with the amount of cheap merchandise (to make up for the crazy expensive merchandise), with myself buying $5 badges and $4 cups (bargain of the night!!), and Emma buying $4 cups and a $10 britney bracelet. We got icecream (which was crazy expensive of course), headed in to find out seats, and started taking photos and waiting for the circus to begin.

[With our Britney programs]

[my cheap merchandise]

Britney buttons

four dollar plastic cups - awesome

The view of the stage from where we were sitting

(the pole was a little annoying, but not too bad)

In my mask that came with our programs...

Ticket!

There was a countdown, that started at 25 minutes...

30 seconds to go....

20 seconds...

10 seconds...

5 seconds...

1 second...

Here we have very small, far away and

kinda blurry Britney in a cage

Yep, very blurry

Woo for Britney!

We had heaps of fun, it was amusing to bag out the lip synching, and laugh at her, but we did enjoy it and have a good time. The miming through her first song was very out of time, but she got much better as the night went on. We could tell when she was actually singing, and I think tht a lot of the time she would actually sing lines here and there, it was like there were two backing tapes, one for her the mime to, and one for her to actually sing to. We saw her get changed under the stage a couple of times!! and we laughed at her air guitar attempt (in a song that had no guitar in it....). The circus which was with her (which was a real circus) was pretty good, there were some way cool acrobats and dancers and stuff. And going along with the circus kind of theme, the funniest moment of the show was when, she had this bright pink hammer, and there were three dancers in holes in the stage, with the top half of their bodys exposed, and Britney played 'Whack-a-mole" with them! It was hilarious, but so brilliant! haha! Loved it. The arena came alive when she sang "baby one more time" and "toxic", and during her encore of "womanizer".

Here are some photos from the night we were at Britney, from her official website

This was SO cool!

Womanizer!

These were the awesome backup hip hop dancers,

that were my favourite.

They had their own introductions and all.

All in all it was a great night, and she was fantastic, she looks great, and is a good performer, and if anyone has a problem with being ripped off by her because she lip synchs her shows, then surely they should feel ripped off listening to her albums, because they are kidding themselves if they think the singing on the albums is actually her and it has not been altered dramatically.

After the show, we walked from Rod Laver, all the way back to Emma's house, which took about 45 minutes.

Saturday:

Saturday morning was an early one, as little miss Tessa did not do much sleeping the night before. We played at home in the morning, and then after Tessa went to bed, Emma and I headed down to docklands, and went to costco, which was awesome!!! And so American, and it reminded me of when I was little and Aunty Betty took us to costco in Utah! it was very fun, and we found some cool stuff, and I of course, took photos of fun things!

GIANT pizzas to take home and cook - they looked so good!

The wall of coke! Ahhh heaven!!

Giant pizza slice for lunch!

We had lunch at costco, a giant piece of pepperoni pizza (delish!), and then headed over to Harbour town to have a bit of a shop. After shopping, we went back to Emma's, played with miss Tessa who was awake and much happier, and then piled everyone in to the car and went to Lygon street, to go to country road and witchery (always fun), to visit the american lolly shop, and to but icecream (Tessa once again made a massive mess, but enjoyed herself so much eating her icecream!)

[Tessa eating her icecream and giving me her 'special' smile]

We then went back home and played for a little bit, before I had to leave for the airport to catch my flight home. Thankfully this time jetstar was more or less on time (I think we left 10 or 15 minutes late).

All in all it was a fun weekend, playing with Ethan, Asher and Tessa, and spending time with Emma and going to see Britney.