Put Me In Coach

Lesseee... so, after we traveled to Banff we undertook a 14 (yes, a one-four) hour car trip down to Issaquah, WA. Now, parts of this ride were great: we went through some other national parks that look beautiful and fastastic, I finally got to see the Kootenays, we traveled very close to one of the large polygamist settlements (Bountiful, BC), I revised my thoughts on Cour d'Alene, ID (previously, I had thought of it as the county seat of strange militia movements but now I think it's quite a beautiful vacation destination), and we had the fastest border crossing ever (revision: once we sat through an hour of waiting to get to the border agent, we had the fastest border crossing ever). We also had some downer moments. Actually, it was one, long, four hour downer moment going from Spokane to Issaquah. That ride is terrible and horrendously boring and our car became the death star for a gajillion bugs. I've done it before but I think I must have been catatonic last time because I didn't remember how bad it was. Thankfully, we had those stupendous travel mates of ours to keep our car ride rocking.

The next morning, our little angel children gave their parents the gift of getting up really, really early. It was incredible. Nevertheless, we hopped in the car (yes, we're sadists) and went for a lovely ride down to Seattle so that we could go to the Mariners/Sox game. It was Jack's first professional game and Molly's second but it was the first time that she got to cheer for Big Papi (her favorite player) in person. Both kids surpassed my expectations in their tolerance for sitting through nine innings of baseball. The keys to success? Jack slept on Becca for many innings and Molly got to eat her way through the park (although did actually sit and watch the game for FAR longer than I would have expected. Her attention wandered somewhere around the seventh inning but was refocused when she heard the whole stadium singing. HELLO! ).

The highlight, though, was that it was kids' day to run the bases after the game. John and I have both taken a Fenway tour and gotten close to the field but neither of us have ever been on a big league diamond. Molly and John ran the bases together and I was content to stand on the sidelines with Becca, Nana, and Uncle Eric until Eric gave me the nudge to run with Jack. What? He's a kid too and Eric was right -- when would we have the chance to do that again? He was psyched.

Geared up and ready to...

crash.

Watching the action on the field (and excited by the height of the railing -- perfect for grabbing and leaning over).

Katy and Emmy were in Wisconsin when we went to the game so Uncle Eric decided to amp up his niece with cotton candy instead... can you guess who was the fannette's favorite while she went on a sugar high?

Getting ready to run, Doyles, run.