Take Me Out to the Ballgame

Last night we took our Crew, plus 1, to our city's minor league baseball playoff game. I just overloaded on cold medicine, stuffed my pockets with cough drops, and decided not to let this energy-zapping cold steal my fun.

Da boys:





We actually scored some really nice seats right behind home plate, so we got all settled in with our blown up baseball bats and heart-stopping cheese fries when I spotted this:



See those foreboding clouds? Well, they didn't cause too much havoc right off the bat (pun intended). In fact, it wasn't until around the 8th inning that we had a true problem, but I will get to that in a minute.

All we really had to deal with, in the beginning, were a few light sprinkles that wreaked more havoc on my hair than anything else. It was that sticky, nasty, sorta-kinda dampish hair that, when mixed with no small amount of root-lifter and shine enhancer, gives you the end result of frizzy cement. Not pretty, folks. Not pretty at all.

See this little gal?



Well, that's my JuJu (and Andrew). Let me tell you something right now: Girlfriend can CATCH! Every single promotional thing that they were throwing, she snagged. My girl didn't even have a problem tangling with grown men if it meant getting her hand on the prized squishy baseball. Small size + speed and agility made this child the female equivalent of Dash Incredible last night, which made her brothers and company stand in awe. She walked away with 2 frisbees, a baseball, a rocket, and a t-shirt. You go girl!!

After the rain picked up a bit, we ended up using those frisbees for a makeshift hat. Andrew had other ideas:


Whatever works, right? Not much longer after this picture was taken, the real rain came in. We were at the top of the 8th inning when that happened which made every single person have the same idea: Shelter NOW. We grabbed all the kids and paraphernalia and headed to the inside of the arena along with several hundred other people. It was chaotic to say the least.

We decided to head to a more open area to wait out the rain, but when we were almost there, I looked around and the older three boys were nowhere in sight. I called out to Mark (who was really right in front of me, but it was so loud), to see if they were ahead of him. They weren't. We made it out into the open area and looked everywhere to no avail. Terrible feeling in the pit of stomach, begin. Immediately, Mark took off running while I alerted the arena staff.

Five minutes and seventy five million terrifying thoughts later, here comes Mark walking with the boys in tow. In the end, the boys just got turned around and went in the wrong direction. It was definitely easy enough to do in a crowd that size, BUT they did the right thing because as soon as they realized that they had been separated from us, the sought out a security guard, who saw Mark searching frantically. I will say right now that the fear in that feeling is such an awful one that it's not something that I usually get over quickly. Plus, it just made my heart break for this all over again. :(

At that point, I was ready to go home. Rain, lost children, and cold meds long since having worn off, were the end of this Mama's good time. I was ready for my Nyquil and cozy dry bed. I didn't want to be the dissenter, though, so we stayed until the bottom of the 9th when they were STILL tied up with no end in sight.

Honestly, except for the last part, we really did have a good time. I am also pretty proud that Mark and I didn't succumb to the siren song of the funnel cake. Today, we are planning to do some things around the house and simply veg. What's going on with you this weekend?