For the love of the game

...or maybe just because I love my husband and he really wanted me to take our kids to a Tigers game during this trip. This was definitely not one of my best ideas. Here's what happened. When I finally got the schedule for the trip all figured out the only tickets left for the Tigers game were "Standing Room". Bob told me "NO PROBLEM". I've told you before how he ALWAYS works good seats at ball games, well he had talked to an usher when he went to a game in May and they got pretty buddy-buddy. He told this usher "Karl the Snarl" that he was deploying and that his wife and 4 kids would be coming to a game. Karl told Bob to have us come to his section and he would hook us up with seats. So I thought the standing room tickets were not a problem because we'd go find Karl and get seats. Well we found Karl's section but guess what...No Karl, he wasn't working that night. TOTAL BUMMER! So we searched for a spot to stand against the wall. I don't think I mentioned that my brother, his 2 step sons and a step son's girlfriend accompianied me to the game. We found a place to stand against the wall in left field behind the bull pen. The kids were getting hungry so I decided to take them to get something to eat and ride the tiger carousel. I told my brother and the boys to hold our spot on the wall (the game was a sellout and we didn't want to lose our place to stand). Try to picture me carrying Josiah, wearing a backpack. The other three kids are holding on to the straps that hang down from the backpack. We're all wearing our Tigers shirts too. Lots of people were staring at us. So we rode the carousel and things were going alright, except my arms were already really tired from holding my 30 lb son. Then we went to get some pizza. I ordered a small pizza for the kids and a cherry ICEE drink. We didn't get 10 feet from the pizza stand and Joshua and Abigail were fighting over the ICEE. The top popped off and Joshua's hand was covered with red slush. He started crying. Thankfully there was a large trash can with a flat top right in front of us. I set the pizza down on the trash can and knelt down trying to get the slushy situation under control. All the while I'm trying to keep Josiah trapped between my knees because if I let go of him he would bolt. A very nice man saw that I needed some help and went and got me napkins. We got cleaned up and headed back down to where Mike and the big kids were standing. Fortunately we were standing right behind a handicapped area and there was one open seat there and the usher let Abigail and Joshua share the seat. They ate their pizza and we watched some of game. By this time it was the 4th inning and I thought I might be able to find somewhere for us to sit. So I took all the kids with me and we wandered the stadium looking for seats. This is where things really started to fall apart. Chloe couldn't keep a hold of the backpack strap and she wanted to hold my hand but that meant I was only holding Josiah with one arm and my arms were REALLY getting tired at this point. So Chloe was crying. Abigail and Joshua just wanted to sit down and they kept asking for food. At one point I think they were all crying and the people were really staring at me then. I was telling my self in my head that this was the dumbest thing I've ever done and why did I put myself in situations like this??? It was not good. So finally I decided to give up the search for empty seats and go back to the wall. I stopped and got the kids cotton candy and that made them happy and sticky. We got back to our spot, watched more of the game, and sang take me out to the ball game. Things were getting better. The Tigers were up over the Royals and people started leaving. The very gracious usher showed us to some seats in the 8th inning. We were right behind the left field foul pole and very close to the bull pen. It was all good. In the 9th inning our closer, Todd Jones, gave away the lead and the Royals tied it up. But our Tigers prevailed in extra innings when Brandon Inge hit a 2 run walk-off homer! It was a good game!!! We even stayed for fireworks. So in the end it turned out well. Would I ever do it again? Absolutely not! :)