Weekend Bash!

Last week was my friend Kim's b-day (which is kind of cool because she's easy to remember - she's one week and I'm the next :))....  Kim has been wanting to go to Ravinia all summer and so I had decided that I was going to do a surprise Ravinia party.  I worked hard at contacting some of her friends and I went on-line and purchased a bunch of tickets for the concert on the evening of August 18th (which happened to be Tony Bennett -- it could have been worse -- it could have been slightly better.  And as my friend Kate said when I asked her to come and she asked who we were seeing -- "what - is Kim turning 90?!" -- haha... smartypants.).

Anyways - I got Kim to come to my place around 4:30 and didn't tell her where we were going, but as she's a little smarter than I, she kind of guessed it by the time we turned onto 41.  Go figure.

We ended up stuck in a long line of traffic on Lake Cook Rd and so I called a friend who lives across from the Botanic Gardens and he said that we could park at his house, which we did and then walked on down.  Me texting Kim's friends who were waiting at the park the whole time.  She didn't technically know they were waiting, but again, she's smarter than your average friend :).

Crystal, Carlene, Jessee and Denise all had a great little picnic area set up and I had cooked the night before and that morning (in between a funeral and a run to the store...) and so we had some great eats and some of my wonderful banana nutella cupcakes, which Crystal added her extra touch to by flipping the box before presenting -- she says she thought the box was upside down and she paniced and flipped the box, upside down.... this is the result.... they were very pretty before, but they still tasted great ;)

We had the pleasure ( lol?) of also hearing my Anthony Benneduccio's different looking daughter, Antonia, as well as himself.  He told the story about how he started and he was under a different stage name and Bob Hope had asked what his real name was, which was Anthony something Benneduccio, and Bob Hope was the one who told him he should go by the name Tony Bennett.... Interesting tidbit :)  Anyways - Antonia started for him with like 2 or 3 songs.  She was ok, but I know she was only singing in concerts and recording because her dad was Tony Bennett.

I have to admit that I was pleasantly surprised by how great Tony did.  I thought for sure he'd fade and he stayed in pretty strong voice the whole time.  I even went up by the stage to see him and was shocked by how old he looked and how relatively young he sounded!  I snapped a pict - you can really only see his white suit, but that should be a clue of how old he looked -- he was wearing a white suit (and it was a tux - it was just a suit...)

And here's a few dim picts of the group....

And lets see if we can hear Tony crooning to all his Chicago based fans..... and the other people who came to Ravinia on Saturday, August 18th :)