The Held's Big Night Out

Rob and I have not been out on a date, just the two of us, in months!!! I think the last time we even went to dinner alone was back in November. Crazy! So I was beyond excited to have a big night planned for this past weekend! Not only were we able to go on a date, but we were able to stay overnight at a hotel. With no kids. By ourselves. It was much needed!

Several months ago, tickets for Maroon 5 went on sale. I love, love, love Maroon 5 (and have for the past 10+ years). I’ve seen them once before at an intimate show at the Chicago Theater (it was awesome). Anyways, I really wanted to get tickets to the concert. I am a nerd and I joined the Maroon 5 fan club (for $45) to get access to a ticket pre-sale. Early access scored me tickets in the 27th row on the main floor. I was so excited! I bought the tickets so long ago that it seemed like the date would never get here! Well – it did and it was such a great night!

I went and bought a new outfit and got a mani and pedi for the occassion. My brother-in-law and sister-in-law agreed to watch both kids overnight! It would be Mason’s first sleepover. We dropped the kids off around 4:00 pm at their house and were on our way. We were going to go out to dinner and then go to the concert. We wanted to stop and check into our hotel first. We had made arrangements to stay at the Hilton (since Rob is a Hilton Rewards Member). Little did we know that there are 2 Hilton’s in the area of where the concert was being held. We ended up booking the wrong Hilton! Instead of being at the Hilton that was super close to the Allstate Arena, we were at the Hilton AT the airport. It is literally attached to the airport. On our way there, I was thinking OMG…we are going to the airport! Not ideal, but oh well. It was a little further from where we wanted to be. After we checked in, we went to grab something to eat and have a few pre-concert drinks.

We went to Toby Keith’s – I Love this Bar and Grill. We’ve never been and it was fun. It is a very large place and it was pretty crowded. It was open seating at the bar, so since we found two open seats, we decided to sit there instead of waiting for a table. We had a good dinner and a few beers. We drove to the restaurant, but wanted to go back to the hotel because we were planning on taking a cab to the concert. Well…since we were at the airport, it was very easy to catch a cab. We got to Allstate Arena just after the opening act started. Owl City and Neon Trees were the opening bands. Both were pretty good. We had great seats on the main floor. Of course, I still would have liked to have been closer. Maroon 5 was awesome! I think the venue kind of stinks, but the show was still great! We decided to head out just before the show ended because we had no idea what the cab situation was going to be like to get home. Good thing we went outside when we did because cabs were pretty much nonexistent. They did have a cab line, which we were probably 30th in line and then there were over 100 people behind us. Only one cab came ever few minutes. You’d think there would have been lines of them just waiting. Allstate needs to work on this. It then started raining and was pretty miserable waiting. We waited about an hour before we finally were able to catch a cab. It was awful. We didn’t get back to the hotel until 1:30 am or so. Oh well – it was still worth it to get a night away since they are so few and far between. We had a great time overall!