a thank-you date @ the hollywood bowl.

after weston selflessly drove us home from our 3 hour vegas trip at 4:00 in the morning a few weeks ago, (ugh, i still cringe just thinking about it :/) i started browsing around for some kind of a fun date to repay him for his kindness. he more than deserved a day that was focused on him and not my health for a change.

for those of you who don't know - weston is an amazing composer. he writes the most beautiful music (he wrote the music in this video of mine!) and teaches the front ensemble at a few high schools. one of his favorite composers is thomas newman, who did the music for lots of great movies, including finding nemo, and wall-e....

so when i stumbled upon the hollywood bowl website and saw that they were having their orchestra perform the music from different pixar movies, i bought tickets instantly and somehow managed to keep it a secret until we got there.

it's pretty uncommon to find a place weston hasn't been to before (i swear, that guy has been everywhere) but he had never been to the bowl anddddd he said he'd never seen a full orchestra perform live! double newbie alert! i was thrilled.

i had packed us a healthy, (aka weston-approved) picnic of avocado turkey sandwiches, grapes,  strawberries... and for "dessert?" apple slices with peanut butter dipped in granola and almond flakes.

the orchestra went through all the pixar movies, playing music along with little clips from the films that had been pieced together to create a summary of the movies.

a lot of the musicians from last night had actually recorded with pixar for the films' soundtracks! so awesome! as the encore for the night, they played 'you've got a friend in me' with a collaboration of film clips from all the movies and then a tribute to each of the composers. 

here's a tiny bit of that : 

so thankful that everything went smoothly and that weston had a good time.

i'll have to plan dates more often! it was fun being the surpriser and not the surprisee for once. :)