Do You Rock The Rally Towel?

I know, I know... we're already past baseball season. Heck, we're almost to next season! Only a month and a half until pitchers and catchers report, but really, who's counting?


Anyways...


While we were in FC visiting the Awesome Family for Jerome's birthday, we went to a Rockies game. Now, you have to understand something. In our home, there are two major seasons of the year. Baseball and Football. There is the lesser season of Basketball, but it is used mostly to sustain our sports senses until the major seasons roll around again. And, yes, the girls have this bug too.


Here are our girls' opinions on baseball:

Katrina - The Rockies are the best team ever (that's my girl!). Daddy's team, the Astros, are stinky poo. The Yankees (our pastor's team) are even worse. They are stinky cheese, which is the worst designation a sports team can receive in her world.

Madison - Every team is the Rockies. The Rockies win every game. We love the Rockies.

Violet - I like Wockies. Ooh, lights. Go Wockies (as she dances like a crazy person).


Katrina has been to a few Rockies games, but Madi & Violet had not. What an excellent opportunity to indoctrinate our youngest small ball disciples, while encouraging the fervor of the eldest?


Question: Have you ever attempted to get four children, all under age 6, and four adults, one of whom is prego, out the door on time to drive an hour to get to a game on time? Let me tell you, it's an adventure.


Traffic was, of course, special once we reached Denver, so we got to the game in the middle of the first inning. Had Daddy had his druthers, we would have been there 2 hours before the first pitch. But, he is learning to compromise, and was a good sport about it.


Did I mention that the game we went to was against the Cardinals, with the Division lead on the line? There were just a few people there. Like more people than live in our entire county.


So, here's the beautiful prego Kristin, trying to be as comfortable as possible while the baby girl is karate chopping her innards. And the awesome brother Adam. And the Pax Man, who was slightly hyper and giddy to be there. Even if he had no clue why he was there.





Aren't you proud? I allowed myself to be photographed! And, of course, Madi was too enthralled with the game to pause for a photo op.

We sat in our favorite section, right in left center, under the JumboTron. Easy access to concessions, close to the restrooms, close to the action and the playground for the kiddos. But just look at all the people! See, I wasn't kidding!

Here's Madi enjoying her first ballpark hot dog. Even though she didn't eat it.

The night we went, it was Rally Towel Night. The first 10,000 or so fans got free rally towels. Because we were late, we did not get rally towels at the gate. But, once we sat down, every parent, grandparent, uncle, college student, and drunk fan within 50 rows decided that the kiddos could not go to their first game without a rally towels. Here is Violet, modeling proper Rally Towel etiquette.

And, here she is demonstrating why we were so grateful to receive so many rally towels.

Pax actually sat still for a few moments, enthralled by the lights and people. Remember, I said a few moments. Which is actually a long time for him.

Madison took full advantage of Pax's inability to sit still to get some lovin from her Auntie.

Yup, as long as Pax had his trains, and Violet had her ice cream and pom pom, they were happy campers.

And what did our eldest child think of the game, you may ask? Well, she spent the entire ride down there deciding what she was going to spend her birthday money on. Once we got to the stadium, she was too excited to eat her dinner. She mooched peanuts off of the nice man sitting next to her (more on him later). She found a Cardinals fan her age a few rows back, and got into an argument with him over which team was better. She carefully chose her treasures at the Dugout Store. She sang and cheered and screamed and waved her rally towel, memorized the lineup so she would know when her favorite (Mommy's favorite) players were up to bat. She scarfed her ice cream in under a minute. And generally had one of the best nights of her little life.

It was so much fun to begin to share our love of baseball with our daughters. The nice man who sat next to Katrina was there with his youngest daugher. She is now 21. He began taking each of his three daughters to games when they were 4. He has taken each one to a game, just daddy and daughter, every year. That's a lot of hot dogs. And a lot of memories.

When Katrina sat next to him, you could see his eyes light up. He and his daughter shared with us, through the 9 innings, memories of games, stadiums, players. But more importantly, they shared their relationship. Here was a dad and a daughter that were able to weather the often-difficult road of growing up through a joined love of a game. I'm sure they've had their moments, their disagreements. But they always had baseball. Something they could share.

I pray this for my husband and our girls. That we, as parents, will be intentional in raising our girls. Intentional in spending that quality time with them. Build a relational foundation that will weather storms.

Because it may have just been a baseball game to that dad, but to the daughter, it was life.