2013 The Year in Review

Hello friends and family and complete strangers that read this blog,

It’s time, once again, for the year in review blog;

2013 was a great year indeed!   I got engaged to Kate and we got hitched up as well, yeah!

Sadly my wrestling event attendance was down considerably since last year from 21 events to only 6.  However it was Kate and Addison’s first time going to wrestling.  Kate, Canaan and I attended the WWE live event at the Augusta Civic Center in June, Canaan loved it.  Addison’s first was at the Topsham Fair in August that we attended with Canaan, Kate, and the Chase Clan.  Kids had an awesome time! 

On the concert front Kate and I hit some great shows!  Starting with Jewel at the Merrill Auditorium in March with Holly Williams, we loved both of them.  We bought the live recording of Jewel’s portion of the show.   June saw us attend back to back days of music awesomeness.  Saturday we headed to Meadowbrook with Caleb and Emma for Old Crow Medicine Show & The Avett Brothers.  It was a great show and a hippie fell on me, he was very apologetic.  Sunday we went to the Old Port Festival, in total we saw like 7 acts, the only full set we watched was Charlie Mars at the CLZ stage, he was great.  That night Erin & Chase met us at the State Theatre for Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zero’s, an awesome show to say the least.  The finished out our concert season with free tickets to Grace Potter and the Nocturnals also at the State Theatre.

John and I sat front row at the State Theatre for Weird Al Yankovic, it was simply phenomenal! All around one of the best shows I have ever been too!  Sang my favorite songs of his plus a couple I’ve never heard of.  Surreal with the whole audience singing along to “The Saga Begins”. 

On June 27^th, after months of planning with the hall booked and invitations ordered Kate decided to heck with all of it and we went to City Hall and got married.  It was a lovely ceremony on the lawn under a tree with our friend Meagan as one of the witness as well as the Gardiner Animal Control Officer.   We had lunch at Alex Parker’s Steakhouse and then I went to work for a double.

Sadly I had to bid farewell to the Blazer.  She was a good vehicle whose time had come.  I sold her to Paul’s Pick Apart and used the money to register the Dodge Caravan, our new ride that we love!

We had a couple nice vacations this year.

The first was a family reunion of sorts in Maryland with Kate’s family.  It was a nice drive in our sweet new van with Caleb & Emma.  It was a lot of fun with food, music, fishing, crabbing, and more.

The Second was out kick ass Honey moon in Northern, Maine, Canada, & Downeast, Maine.

Even though we exchange vow in June we still had the reception in September at the Sportmans Club in Gardiner.  We had a nice turn out, some great food, and great dancing.  It was a lot of fun!

We took in two musicals this year.  In October Kate & I, John & Julie, Johnny & Magen, and Caleb & Emma all traveled to Lynn, MA for Evil Dead the Musical, it was fantastic.  Then in November Kate and I took in Hallowell's Gas Light theatre production of Promises, Promises.  It was really very good and well worth the ticket price!

In November we rented a house in Randolph on Hillcrest Avenue, a house that we just love! It’s two floors with the upstairs being a big loft with a bedroom for the kids to play in, basement, wood burning fireplace, big backyard with a hill that had a slope just enough to provide decent sledding! 

The Fireplace came in handy during Christmas week and Ice Storm of 2013 when we lost power for about 24 hours.  Minor compared to mom and the Roods who were out 5 – 6 days.

The kids had great years as well, Addison started the 4 year old program and participated in Fall Cheering.  Canaan entered 2^nd grade, continued with Karate, played baseball, flag football, and is currently midway through his basketball season.   They are both doing great in school. 

They are both are growing up so fast, especially Canaan, that it’s scary.

It was a good year for the Labbe’s.  

 

Evil Dead the Musical!

Saturday October 19^th was a great day!

After working getting out of work this morning I attended Canaan’s final football game of the season.  He had a great time playing flag football this year and is looking forward to playing tackle football next year. 

They combined the 4 teams into two teams to play 40 minutes of game time, and then they had 4 stations of competition where they broke the teams into 4 again.  Canaan won in his group for the throwing and kicking, and did very well in the running punting.

My mom took the kids immediately after the game and I headed home for some sleep.  Getting 3.5 hours of rest Kate and I headed over and picked up John and Ju to head south to Lynn, MA for Evil Dead the Musical!

We’ve wanted to see this, John, Ju & I, ever since we first heard about it back in 2003 when it debuted in Canada.  Last year the Arts After Hours Theatre in Lynn, Ma staged the show and for various reasons weren’t able to go.  When they announced it this year though, I bought tickets immediately!  Joining us on our trip were Emma, Caleb, Johnny, & Magen, in their own vehicle. 

Evil Dead the Musical is based on the original Evil Dead Trilogy combining elements of the 3 films to make an awesome musical horror comedy that features a splatter zone, which we gleefully were sitting in! 

The original plan was to eat first at Hilltop Steakhouse in Saugus.  I have driven by that 68 foot tall Cactus on Route 1 more times that I can count in my lifetime and have always wanted to go.  This seemed like the perfect opportunity to finally do so.  Then I found out that they were closing up shop for good on October 20^th. 

We got down there and discovered that there was a 3 hour wait just to get a number, then the wait was an hour plus after that to get seated.  Don’t want to eat there that bad!  We ended up eating at Polcari’s Italian Restaurant just up the road.  The food was excellent!  Kate had calamari, Ju chicken parmesan, John and I both had the 4 cheese penne with Italian sausage sliced and folded in.  It was so good, the sausage nice and spicy, but not hot. 

The other group was about a half hour behind us and they went to Hooters.

We found the theatre after getting turned around a couple times and made our way in.  This is not a theatre in the traditional sense.  This is a room that I believe was an old bank vault, with risers and stacking padded seat chairs that seat about 100 people.  The show was sold out. 

Our front row splatter zone tickets also netted us free ponchos.  Only Ju and Kate put theirs on over their heads, the rest of us just covered out laps.  Everyone was wearing either white or Evil Dead the Musical white shirts except Kate and me, I had my blue Evil Dead shirt on and Kate had normal clothes. 

The rest of us were looking for some to get coated in stage prop blood, however, they used watered down washable tempura paint so it looked cool for the moment, but will wash out. 

I cannot say enough just how awesome this production was!  The cast was fantastic, the music, supplied by a live band off to the left was amazing, the dance numbers were excellent, and everyone had a stupendous time! 

The actors performed both on the stage and on the floor directly in front of us and each of us has some sort of physical interaction with the cast, mine being an unfortunate ass grinding on my lap by the character Scotty.  Everyone played their roles wonderfully especially the girl that played both Shelly & Annie and played them convincingly as two different people. 

We all got covered, some more than others, with the stage blood.  Near the end during the big Ash vs. the Candarian Demons battle they literally made it rain blood from a sprinkler located in ceiling, John got soaked!  It appears the barrier line was right at between us as I barely got any on me.

From start to finish the show ran close to 2.5 hours with the intermission.  Such a great show!  I only wish this was being performed closer to home so I can go again!

On the way home we all stopped at Sonic Drive in.  Kate wanted a cream-slush and a burger, no cheese.  As I was ordering her burger she screamed out ketchup & mayonnaise, and then got aggravated as to why I found that confusing.  Did she just want ketchup & mayonnaise, no ketchup & mayonnaise, extra ketchup & mayonnaise?  She wasn’t very clear, and then yelled at us that she was out numbered because John, Ju, & I all have the same brains.  I never heard it said that way, but it is a spot on description of how we think alike.

We made excellent time and rolled in the door yard at 1:35 am.

Such a great day!

Later Readers!