OMG, what a fantastic concert! That man is so talented it hurts. Twice I found myself with tears streaming down my cheeks and I didn't realize I was crying.

One thing for sure...you have to see the whole stage to appreciate this show.....and watching Clay's face as the vignettes unfold is incredible. I LOVED EVERY MINUTE OF IT!!! For those of you who still have this too look forward to, I envy you so much.

The bus trip was terrific. We had to be at the meeting place at 7:10 am on Sunday morning for 7:30 departure. Well, everyone was there early so we were able to leave early. The next pick up stop was the same, so we left that place early too. By the time we got to Niagara Falls, (Canada) we had gained a 1/2 hour in time so we were able to stop at McDonalds and have breakfast before we crossed the border. There were 42 Claymates, and one lone Claydawg and the bus driver who we, of course, Clayverted. (We gave her a ticket for the concert and she loved it.). On the bus we watched videos, played games, some the girls made cookies, and sandwiches and brought drinks and all in all the whole thing was so well organized I couldn't believe it. I've never laughed so much in my life.

We arrived in Youngstown at about 3:30, checked in to the hotel, which was really nice..and after a break to get spruced up, met again in the lobby to go for dinner. The restaurant had been booked in advance so they were expecting us and everything went reasonably well, at 6:45 we all got back on the bus to go to the concert.

Then we got lost! After driving down the same streets three or four times we realized that we had no idea where the venue was (I suspect someone used Mapquest for the directions). Finally we stopped and asked for help and with 10 minutes until showtime we pulled up to the arena. After sweet talking the cops for another 5 minutes they finally let us drive to the entrance and disembark, but as we entered we could hear William Joseph playing his first number...ooops!

Thank goodness there was an opening act for this tour! We would have hated missing even a second of Clay's performance...which was wonderful.

Anyway, during the intermissions I hooked up with a few Amercian girls who belong to Generation Clay, my fan club, and that was really nice to see them again.

Strangely enough, I had looked more forward to the first half of the show, but the second half just blew me away. His voice was so beautiful and pure, especially during "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" and "Good News", that I was stunned. Although I loved both of them, neither of these songs impressed me on the downloads like they did at the actual event. I was totally awestruck!

Just remembering it makes me shake my head in wonder and amazement. The audience had a lot of men of all ages in it and the response was terrific, people just leapt to their feet after the encore. Very good crowd response, I thought.

Anyway, some of our group stayed to wait for Clay to come out to the buses, but we didn't. Most of us were pretty tired from that early start, not to mention the concert high and we knew that anyone staying would have to take a taxi back. Turned out there was one taxi that could only take a few at a time, but those who stayed really enjoyed it....and they did get a handshake.

We were off by 10 the next morning (Monday)- weather was fantastic, about 66 degrees and sunny- stopped twice to shop in Erie PA, for a total of about two and a half hours. Right now the Canadian dollar is pretty close to the U.S. in value and there is no tax on a lot of items in PA, so we enjoyed that. Got home in the pouring rain at about 8 PM. Wonderful, wonderful time!

I'm still floating...and still in love...sigh!

Happy birthday to our guy today...can he get any better?

Love, Bev