Take Me Out to the Ball Park

This past Friday was not only Good Friday (so we had the day off from school), but it was also the Opening Day for the Texas Rangers. And lucky us, we got free tickets from my mom (who got them from her co-worker). We've never been to a season opener so we were pretty stoked.

At first, Russell wasn't going to be able to go because he had too much work to do. But on Thursday afternoon, he decided he'd just do a 1/2 day on that Friday so he could come with us. But that meant that we didn't leave our house until 11:40 (game started at 1).

Which was a huge rookie mistake. I was wondering why earlier that morning when Sophia and I were at the donut shop, that we saw people filling their ice chests with ice and loading up on donuts, in full Ranger gear....at 8:30 in the morning.

Now I know why. We made pretty good time until we were less than a mile from the ballpark. At that point we sat in traffic for 30 minutes and were going no where. It was a parking lot. As we inched past a few parking lots, we noticed that they were full of tailgaters who were taking up more than one parking place, and who knows how many of those people actually had tickets. Here's my opinion for what it's worth. If you don't have a ticket to the game, then you shouldn't be allowed to park in the official Ranger parking.

So back to the traffic nightmare. We were about 20 minutes from the game starting and so Russell suggested that Sophia and I just get out and walk to the stadium. It wasn't that far...So we jumped out of the car and walked for about a minute. Then we saw one of those bicycle taxis and hopped in. That guy could weave in and out of traffic and go in between the cars. We got to the ballpark in less than 5 minutes. $10 well spent.

So we made it! Well, Sophia and I did anyways.

Our seats were behind first base.

We made it in time to see the first pitch but we missed the fly by (we heard it). We missed the cool flag thing (saw it on other peoples facebook status updates). And we missed seeing the National Anthem (we heard it trying to find our seats).

And we got to see some of our favorite players like Josh Hamilton....

and Ian Kinsler.

The best thing about where we were sitting was that we were sitting in full shade the entire time.

I think Sophia was more interested in playing with Jack's toys than watching the game.

At one point Sophia wanted to lay down and go to sleep. I should have known something was wrong right then. That is totally unlike her, especially with all of the noise and action around her.

More Josh....

And an hour later, Russell finally made it to the ballpark. They had finally opened up the Cowboys stadium parking on the west side. Took 'em long enough. There just was not enough parking. Russell payed $12 to park there too. Sad.... but at least he made it there and didn't just head home without us.

More Josh or Ian...can't tell at this angle.

Once her daddy got there and we got her pizza and ice cream, she perked right up (On a side not, the shift from mama's girl to daddy's girl has happened. She no longer wants me every time and is always asking for her daddy. I told him it would happen one of these days. Not sure how I feel about it yet :)).

Jack loves his cousin Sophia (and vice versa).

There's Aunt Amy and Uncle Jay.

A stranger was nice enough to offer to take our pic. 

We left at the top of the 9th inning to "beat" the traffic. See, there's Jerry's World and we were parked on the other side.

Fat chance at beating the traffic. I guess everyone else had the same idea.

Sophia got on her daddy's shoulders and we set off for our car.

All in all, I'd say the experience was a little less than what I'd expected. But live and learn. If we ever get opening day tickets again, we're leaving at 8 am.