Christmas for the Children with Julianne Hough, a benefit concert.

For those of you who don't know, my husband works at a community mental health center (Helen Ross McNabb) as a clinician.  They have a Christmas for the Children program where they provide Christmas for several needy families during the holiday season.  Last night they had a concert benefitting the program and raised $7500!  It gave me and Jeff an opportunity to donate to a great cause and enjoy a  fun date night as well!  It was a wonderful, intimate concert of only about 150 attendees.  I brought my camera but made the regretful decision to use my 50mm lens instead of my zoom lens!  (The 50mm is like a permanent fixture on my camera and I didn't even think to replace it with the zoom lens so I could get 'up close' shots.  SO, you will have to excuse the heads and random bodies in the photos  ;)

So cute, Jeff was getting his ticket signed by the pretty girl  ;)

All the McNabbers & Julianne

We were able to meet her briefly (basically, I shook her hand and said hi) and have our photo taken with her.  They had a professional photog that took our pic with Julianne and they are mailing them to us.  They made me & Jeff get ours together since we were a 'couple.'  But, later I saw people asking her for pictures & snapping them with their own cameras/phones.  I was going to have Jeff take a picture of me & her together but by that time, she was on her way out and people kept asking her for pics and saying "last one" so I decided not to try to get one.  My fear of annoying the crap out of her by asking for another pic outweighed my want for one.  ha!  We also got to chat with her guitarist for a bit (we ran into him in the lobby & Jeff wanted to tell him he did a good job.)  He was really nice and even asked us what we what we were doing (after the show.)  I'm sure he was just being nice but Jeff seems to think he wanted us to come to an after-party.  Kidding.  I don't even think there was an 'after party' and I'm sure he could tell we were an old married couple, especially after I told him our 'big plans' for the night included picking up our toddler from the sitter & heading home  ;)
It was a good night.  A nice Christmasy party since I don't get to go to a company party anymore and Jeff doesn't have company Christmas parties.   It's funny how much you enjoy getting out for an evening after you become a parent!  I have to admit though, I was pretty excited to see my little guy when we got home (he got to have a 'date' too at his girlfriend Victoria's house!)