TEN...10... ONE-ZERO...

I SO remember the day I turned double digits. It is big! So big, that I thought we needed to celebrate the 10 year life of my oldest son with something extra special for him. So, what did we do? Thanks to help from a few friends and family, we loaded up the car (just the 3 of us) and headed to see our favorite team play some ball. I do not think that we could have done anything that he would have enjoyed more. The excitement on his face and in his attitude was contagious.

We got up on Saturday morning, dropped off the kids with Gran and Papa (with Nommie coming to the rescue after dinner time) and headed out for our road trip. Thanks to a friend (that I used to babysit) we were hooked up with a room at the Omni Hotel in downtown ATL. The hotel in itself was fun stuff. It is the site of the CNN Headquarters so it was busy, busy!! We checked in, put our stuff up and headed out on a mission to get the field early for batting practice and dinner. We hit a snafu or two on the way (obviously looking like lost tourist) and were escorted by a "nice" escort to the MARTA station via Underground Atlanta (don't ask why...we had parking passes for the field, we just wanted the "experience"- so Brent says). After some needed handholding, water purchasing for dollar bills and some mustered up confidence we found the buses to the field and headed over. Sadly, it was raining so there was no batting practice, but the stadium was empty enough for us to enjoy the Braves Museum, some ball park food, and a walk around the gift shops. Right at game time, the sky cleared up and we headed down to our seats... we were SHOCKED!!!





Again, thanks to some friends we scored some AWESOME seats. We thought we were in the second set of seats. When we got there, we discovered we were ON THE FIELD. LIKE LITERALLY! We were just a few seats down from the visiting team's dugout. We could make eye contact with the Dodgers. We could touch the dirt on the field. We had to keep a continual heads-up watching for the ball. IT WAS A BLAST! Sadly, mom got sent on the snack run... and wouldn't you know that Daddy and Bay made the JUMBO-TRON while I was gone. OH Well, Mom always has to take one for the team. Bay appreciated his Dippin' D@ts so all is well. And in one of the last few plays of the game, a lefty hit a grounder up the third base line and it hit the wall right at our knees. Brent did try to dive for it, but could not quite reach it. The bat boy gave it to a kid several seats down, but word is that the Jones fam made it on TV showing the play. (good thing I reminded the boys that because of our location and all the camera's there would be no nose picking during the game =)

This Dodger (who had a great game) slid into third at his first at bat so hard that his pants ripped open down the side. I think I saw his panties (he he he) but he was too tough to change and let the breeze flow all game long. (the photo does not do it justice)
This was the Dodgers dugout... see how close. I am sure we made a fool of ourselves staring and pointing... it was so close we could see the bullpen on the screens in the dugout.
Do you know how big these cats are? We were excited that Heyward got to play... this is him on 3rd. He is a BIG man!

SO MUCH FUN!!! Our only regret was that our buddy Chipper Jones was out having surgery. He was JUST injured the week before the game and was not able to play. We hope that we still get one more chance to see him before he retires.