On another note, it looks like my streak of 3 homecoming celebrations in a row will end this year, unless I travel for work. I don't remember seeing anyone from the Chicago area this year.

A little back story on that: 3 years ago I was in Little Rock for work. We were installing some software for a customer and one of their locations was actually in Kris Allen's hometown! Needless to say, I was very excited to go to that location for one day that week. I had never experienced American Idol in a community setting like that before - everyone was fully behind Kris and all the buildings in the downtown area were decorating for the homecoming celebration/parade, including our customers. They all had shirts that they wore on the days the show was on (I can't remember what they said). The pizza place next door was where they held the viewing parties, so I grabbed a flyer and kept it as a souvenir. The day we left was the day of Kris' homecoming celebration. We attempted to check out the concert in the park before we had to head to the airport, but there was no parking at all. We decided we wouldn't be able to do it at that point, so we pulled over in a parking lot to set the GPS up. When we pulled out of the parking lot to continue to the airport, a cop stopped us and out comes the American Idol mini-caravan! We all freaked out and got out of the car to cheer Kris on. We ended up following the caravan for a little while because they were heading in the same direction we were - in fact, we were the first non-caravan car behind Kris when he crossed the river (they always show that shot in the homecoming montage). It was very unexpected and exciting, especially since he was my favorite that season and won.

Then the last two seasons, I went to both Lee's and Haley's homecoming concerts. They were a lot of fun. Lee's was especially awesome because he played for about an hour when it was only supposed to be 3-5 songs. I like to think that I started the successful encore chant of "One more song!..." as well. The place was packed too - probably about 40,000 people there (almost as many as would fit in Wrigley Field, for comparison purposes). Haley's was great too, but it was cold and rainy and the sound was off. Not as many people showed up probably because of the weather, but it was still very well attended - at least 20,000-25,000 if I had to guess at it. I was really happy when Lee won, again because he was a favorite and because he was the hometown boy (his hometown is literally 15 minutes from me - we would've used the same train line to get into Chicago. Haley is actually from my Mom's hometown which is cool, and her town neighbors Lee's which is pretty incredible. Chicago Northwest Suburbs representing!