I can start by saying that last night ranks among the best nights of my life.  It was truly unbelievable and its giving me chills even now.  I imagine we’ll be riding this high for a few days.

To start off, I’ve been a fan of Pearl Jam for about 15 years.  Yes, do the math and you can see that is from before Jacob’s birth.  Vitalogy came out in 1994 and I was listening to that during the first few years of Jacob’s life.  One of my favorite albums.

About 8 months ago, Jacob asked me for some new music suggestions.  He’d gotten burnt out on AC/DC and was looking for something new.  I suggested he give Vitalogy a listen.  2 months later he knew more about Pearl Jam than I did.  4 months later he could recite me the track list of every album - many of which I had never listened to.  6 months later he could pretty much recite you their entire wikipedia entry.

Cut to last night.  We bought tickets for the first LA show for the new album Backspacer.  We bought them through the fan club, but didn’t even consider that there was a lottery for the first few rows and that was a possibility.  We knew that seniority mattered, so we thought we’d be in good seats but probably not fantastic seats.  Wrong.  We got 2ND ROW CENTER.  We were both kinda stunned and sat in the back watching Ben Harper warm up before going down to take our seats during the break.

Show was just plain incredible.  If it had just been a show from anywhere in the venue it would have been incredible.  But put us in the 2nd row and it was mind-blowing.

And then…

About midway through the 2nd set, I noticed that Eddie had looked right at Jacob a few times.  I glanced at Jacob and Jacob was kinda in shock about it.  Towards the end of the show, they started a somewhat obscure track called State of Love & Trust.  Jacob had been singing every word to every song with gusto and I think Eddie noticed that.  When this song started, I saw Eddie look right at Jacob and he saw he was singing it with just as much force and confidence, and I could literally SEE Eddie get the idea that he should invite this kid up to sing with him.  Not 30 seconds later… he did!

He pointed right at Jacob and said “come on up here”.  Jacob scrambled up with the urging of everyone we were sitting with.  And he was up there.  In front of 6,000 fans.  Belting out this song with Eddie Vedder.  It was so unbelievable.  I scrambled for my iPhone, hoping the battery would hold out long enough.  And I got the whole thing.  Here are pics and the video.

Jacob on stage with Eddie Vedder from Jay Dysart on Vimeo.

So then to cap it all off… during the finale, Eddie started passing out tambourines to a few people. He took one backstage and got a pen and scribbled a message for Jacob on it and brought it right to Jacob. Wow. Could it get more awesome?

This is us at the end:

It took us 30 minutes at least to get back to our car. Everyone wanted to congratulate Jacob and give him hugs and high-fives. We drove home just in shock. Hard to believe it was even real.

Special thanks to the amazing fans who gave Jacob so much love - especially those who shared the pictures with us over email.  This dad is so thankful to have these pictures to remember this forever.

Oh, and I didn’t even mention that earlier in the week Jacob won a special Pearl Jam twitter promotion where they sent out a picture of a local record store and award a limited edition orange vinyl single to the first person who shows up there.  What a week!

Just found this video today. Someone got the whole thing on video and posted it on YouTube.

I’m a little behind in posting these episodes to Choggymowk.  But this is our Crab Cakes episode and voting is still open!  Please vote!

OK, so we’re having some fun with votisodes these days.  Here’s our second series.  Its a cooking show.  We are on a mission to make lots of new meals that we haven’t tried before.  We ask our kids to be adventurous in what they eat all the time, so we figured we should take up the challenge ourselves.  So… each episode will feature us making a new dish and at the end you get to vote on some choices for us to make next.

This week we made Paprika Schnitzel and Brussels Sprouts.  Wait till you see Micah’s face on the sprouts - pretty awesome. 

Check it out and vote!

Jacob was absolutely awesome in this year’s school play at Rogers. He played the Wizard in the Wizard of Oz. I loved this little snippet from the show. What fun! School is winding down now and we are making plans for summer like crazy. Camps, sports, water fun, music lessons. Gonna be busy!

This poem was written by Jacob:

The wind is in my hair as I kick with my foot
The rhythm of my wheels on the cracks of the sidewalk
Thu-thump, thu-thump, thu- thump
The curb is coming to meet me at the end of the block
It draws closer and closer
Its short drop seeming like a cliff
I lean back slightly, about to go off
And then it happens
That sweet split-second in which I am flying, untouched by worldly problems
Just flying
Then, as my wheels touch down, the entire world comes back in a single gust of wind
Thu-thump, thu-thump, thu-thump
Back down to earth on my skateboard

Lots of video around these parts these days. Jacob had a cooking project for his math class and he elected to turn it into a video project. This was a couple weekends of work for him (and us). Pretty fun.

P.S. The brownies are… honest truth… the best brownies I have ever had. No joke. We’ve already made a second batch.

Jacob was in the Rogers Drama Club production of Anne of Green Gables this year. It was his first real experience being in a play and he had a wonderful experience. Rogers has a great Drama Club with a wonderful teacher. We’re looking forward to the next one. Enjoy this quick edit of a few Jacob moments from the play:

Lucas and his friend Olivia sang “A You’re Adorable” at the Lowell Elementary Variety Show this year. Check out the video. They did great!

Micah is 2!
Posted to Flickr by hookjd on 19th February, 2007.