Walking in my Footsteps

My Mom always save the Santa Barbara Independent magazine for me. It's my favorite and I devour the entire magazine. It makes me feel connected to Santa Barbara. Recently I was reading the Independent and saw an ad for a Ziggy Marley family show at Campbell Hall on the UC Santa Barbara campus. My alma mater! The Phi and I are huge fans of the "Family Time" cd by Ziggy Marley and this show was going to be from that album. AND tickets were only $10. I brought the idea up to Joey and he said I should get tickets. I thought it over for a few and decided this was opportunity for some great bonding time with The Phi. So I bought two tickets online.

The Phi and I counted down the days until the concert. And when it finally arrived we were beyond excited. Joey dropped us off at UCSB and we picked up our tickets at will call and had about 40 minutes before the show. They had people making balloon animals, and face painting but the lines were too long so instead we checked out the pencil art near by.

Then we headed into Campbell hall and found we had seats in the 3rd row. 3RD ROW!! It was an acoustic set so I wasn't too worried about ear plugs. The lights dimmed and the show started. The first song was my favorite from the album called "I love you too". Towards the end of the song Ziggy asked the parents to look at their children and sing the words.

"I love you too

I love you too

I tell you I love you"

And of course I cried.Just so much love bursting from me for my Phi. The rest of the show was awesome. The Phi and I sang each and every song. He even performed "Three Little Birds" by his amazing father Bob Marley. I couldn't get over how cool it was to be singing along to "3 Little Birds" with my daughter and Bob Marley's son. Crazy! The Phi even got up and danced for a bit.

The show ended way too soon and after we wandered around campus. I showed The Phi where I took most of my classes and told her how much fun her Aunt Crissy and I had there.

I took her by the Chicano Studies department. Home base when I was at UCSB.

 

I love that my school has not only bike lanes, but a skateboard lane too.

And of course we stopped by to see Storke Tower. We can see the tower from Nana and Tata's house.

As we walked back to where Joey was going to pick us up we noticed the face painting booth was still running. So The Phi hopped in line and after a few minutes in the chair she was a purple unicorn with red hair! She loved it and Joey's face when he saw her was awesome.

The concert was one of those memories that I will never forget. Spending the afternoon with my eldest daughter. Singing our hearts out and watching her walk the paths around a campus that I walked for years. Back in 2000, as I walked the campus to classes and meetings I never could imagine watching my 5 year old walk those same pathways. 10 years later there she was.