Surprise!

On Friday night, we left town to go "camping." Grahm thought we were meeting friends (who had all the camping supplies) in Houston for the weekend. When we made a pit stop for some gas (and an ungodly amount of junk food), I told him the real reason we were going to Houston. SURPRISE!

Here's his reaction:

(He's stinkin' cute, if I do say so myself.) The next couple hours were spent convincing him that he'd be great and deciding what song he was going to sing.

When we finally made it to Houston, we immediately pulled into Reliant Center, expecting a big line. There was no one. The nice guy in the tiny security shack told us, "Yeah, there's no way they're gonna let you line up till 4." ... It was 11:15.

We decided to get a hotel, and lo and behold, there was one right across the street! Only one room left! The hotel clerk wasn't exactly a salesman. He made the room sound real jank-tastic and asked if we wanted to check it out first. In an unfortunate turn of events, while we were up checking the room out... someone had booked the room from an outside source. So, we were up a creek. By this time it was 12ish, and I was not wanting to fork over 120 bucks to sleep for 3 hours. So we opted for the car.

Here we are (after two hours of Grahm practicing). Super attractice freeze frame, yeah?  

After tossing and turning in the car for two hours, I couldn't take it anymore. It was 3:30, and I wanted to see what the line looked like! When we arrived, there were only 30 people in front of us. We were about to keel over from fatigue, but we were pumped. Just our luck though, we sat next to the guy who liked to burst into song to "intimidate" everyone else around him. (He also drank a beer at 5 am, if that tells you anything.)

After four hours of standing outside, they finally let everyone in -- except for me, that is. Friends and family weren't allowed to go into the building, so I had to wait in the car for 3 hours. Pins and needles, I tell ya.

He finally came to the car, without a red ticket. He had auditioned with 10 others in front of one very serious man. He chose the two female gospel singers, and apparently one was terrible. (The conspiracy theorist in me thinks they were looking for something specific, but maybe that's just the bitter wife of a rejectee talking...) We did, however, make the news. Grahm's in the shot at 10-12 seconds, so he's basically famous.

The trip was a blast, something we'll always cherish and remember. He's already talking about auditioning for next season!

Thank y'all so much for all your sweet tweets and RTs. I was blown away! Cannot express how sweet it was! Next year, y'all. #GrahmRoachStillNeedsACoach