Vacation - Rays Game

Sunday morning we did something that we haven't ever been able to do with the boys. We took them to an afternoon Rays game for Family Fun Day - where the kids get to run the bases after the game is over. We left the house by 9:30am with our lunches in the cooler and drove down to Tropicana Field. After parking (which was free because we were 4 in the car), we headed to get in line because the Trop wasn't even open yet. One of the main reasons we got there so early was because we knew there would be a crowd (playing the Yankees) and the first 10,000 kids in the stadium got free Soriano t-shirts. We made it into the stadium and got the two t-shirts with no problem. We wandered around a bit at some of the kids booths and then headed up to our seats. The boys got stickers and we watched the Yankees practiced. We ate our lunches in our seats. And then the game started.

The first inning completely went our way - 3 up, 3 down for the Yankees and 2 runs for the Rays. Parker was glued to the action on the field and super happy. But then things got away from us in the fifth inning though and it soon became a Yankee slaughter which made all the Yankee fans around us happy. Parker however became increasingly sad/angry with each Yankee run. We left our seats in the middle of the eighth inning to go down and line up for running the bases and watched the rest of the game on one of the TV screens in the hallway. The boys were super excited about running the bases when they were let out onto the field. Daddy ran with Wesley and Parker took off on his own, zooming around the field. He was so proud of himself for passing some of the other kids - "smoking them" in his words - so fast Mommy couldn't get up to homeplate fast enough to get a picture of him crossing.



On the way home after the game, we decided we probably ought to stop sooner rather than later for dinner. So we called Miss Leslie and to see if she and Miss Rael were up for meeting at Chili's on the Suncoast Parkway for dinner. Unfortunately, Miss Rael was working, but Miss Leslie came and met us. We had a wonderful time at dinner catching up with her and getting lots of hugs. She couldn't believe how much the boys had grown since the last time she had seen them.

We got home late but very content and happy after a fabulous spring break vacation!