American Idol Live

Rachelle Staley totally rocks. Rachelle Staley is my hero. Rachelle Staley has changed lives for almost a thousand internationally adopted children, impacted dozens of youth at NFC (including my daughters now), and has great stories. And I finally got to live in one of them.

Rachelle knows Phil Stacey:

She and Phil and Phil’s sister were really good friends in high school. So after the girls watched about every minute of American Idol for the first time this season, Hayley, Talli and I joined Rachelle tonight at the Rose Garden in Portland for the American Idols Live tour:

I will lose all my street cred and all respect by admitting here to the world that I really, really enjoyed the concert. It was a ton of fun! Chris Sligh was surprisingly good, and I loved one of Blake’s numbers. He used this gear to record himself live; first the beat box drums for rhythm, then the bass line, then fun stuff. Those served as the background as he sang “She will be Loved” and tagged on U2’s “With or Without You” on the end. Awesome!

It’s after 1 in the morning, otherwise I’d blog more, but I have to share a few words and pics. Tomorrow after church we leave for a camping trip for a week, and I want to share the memory-making night I had with my daughters. Because not only was the concert a ton of fun, Rachelle the Magnificent got us these:

That’s an after show pass to meet and greet the idols. We joined maybe 50 people in the Courtside Club to meet 9 of the 10 idols (LaKisha was a no-show.) Each girl got a shirt, and got autographs from all 9:

Here’s one of my favorites of the girls with Gina; you can see more pics on my Flickr site:

I only got in one picture…with Melinda Doolittle. Her voice was my favorite all through the season, and I love the way she is so open about her faith in Jesus:

(Nice geeky smile, huh?)

The only bad part of the night was that we missed out getting a picture with Jordin Sparks, the winner of American Idol. Right as the girls got to her, they whisked her away. We were really bummed, because we missed her autograph, too. However, Rachelle the Empress of Excitement grabbed Phil and said, “You’ve got to get Jordin’s autograph for these girls.” He took Rachelle to the tour bus, and got the autographs! Rachelle also got to walk with Phil and Chris Richardson through hundreds of screaming fans who were waiting around the bus.

Sure, pop music is overhyped and inconsequential. But it was a night my girls loved, as you can see by the smiles on their faces. Rachelle, I owe you big time! 🙂