Rays Game Adventure

So last week we started talking about taking the boys to a Rays Game this week as they are celebrating Championship Week and are having lots of cool give-aways at the stadium. So we planned and bought tickets for last night. The game was set to start at 7:00pm and so we left our house, which is only an hour away, at 4:00pm. The weather was awful in our area yesterday plus, we wanted to make sure we were there in plenty of time for the giveaways and to get the free parking at the stadium (for cars of 4 or more people). We arrived in downtown St. Pete at 5:00pm and proceeded to sit in the biggest traffic jam. It took us an hour just to get from the interstate exit to the stadium. Fortunately, we had brought a picnic dinner (to tailgate with) and we just ended up eating in the car.

We finally get up within a block of the stadium and the big road signs are flashing that the Tropicana Field lots are full. We'll need to park downtown. Which is fine except we didn't bring any cash; we never carry it anyway and we'd planned to park in the free lot. Between us we could only come up with $6 and you need more than that to park downtown on game night. So Mommy jumps out and starts running around trying to find an ATM. Thank God for the nice man at Anytime Fitness who pointed her in the right direction. She got some money, caught back up with Daddy and the boys and together we finally found a parking space!

We walked as fast as we could to get up to the stadium and then proceeded to have to stand in a huge line to get in as the give-away was slowing up the process. Finally we got to show our tickets and get our give-aways and find our seats. We were in row DD behind home plate - which is the last open row (there were two rows blocked off behind us). But we had a great view and had room to spread out in our row and some nice folks in front of us who got the biggest kick out of our boys. We landed in our seats right as the Rays started their ring ceremony on the field as the players received their AL Championship Rings from last season.

And because of the ring ceremony, the give-away for last night was a very nice replica of the Rays championship ring.

We also got to see the championship banners that they had raised at Monday night's game which was very cool!

Despite the fact that the Rays lost last night, there were some very exciting moments, particularly the bottom of the 7th when they started to make a comeback. And we had a very good time as you can see.....