Where I was Friday

Well, it depends on when you are asking about on Friday, because I was a lot of places.  Justin and I had been kicking around the idea of taking the kids to Auburn's Spring Football game (also known as A-Day), and this is the first year we could actually pull it off without too much trauma.  For those of you who don't know us well, we Kendricks like to wait to the bitter end to make major decisions.  And even when the decision is made, we go back to it and mull it over and quite possibly change our minds a few times.  It adds an element of excitement and uncertainty to an already stressful situation, and who wouldn't want that? 

So around 10 am on Friday, we decided we would go.  Actually I called Will at school and let him make the final call, because this was a trip for his birthday (which is this Thursday and I do not have any presents or a party planned, but that's another story).  He would have to miss a baseball game if we went, so we wanted to make sure he was ok with that.  Because if we had gone through all of the trouble and expense of planning this little surprise venture and then he was upset because he had to miss a ball game, I may have jumped from the van onto the interstate in my undone state, and we wanted to avoid such an occurrence. 

Not only did we have to pack, I also had to submit all of the orders for the church's booth at Spring Fling, which would have been pretty time consuming on its own.  Then we had to find someone to watch the dog and take care of our car pool commitments at school.  We ended up leaving around 2ish, which put is in Hotlanta right around 5:30 p.m.  Not a time of day you would want to travel through the ATL, but there was no way around it (believe us, we've tried to find one).  We sat at Spaghetti Junction, fielded questions from the back seat about how long it would take us and if we would ever eat supper, and focused on the prize.

We rolled in to the Opelika Super 8 around 7:30, and I took a Clorox wipe to every hard surface I could find in our room.  We got back in the van and took a scenic tour of Opelika and Auburn trying to decide where to eat.  (You know how we like decisions.)  We settled on Guthrie's, but had a bad feeling when the parking lot was almost desolate compared to every other eating establishment which had been packed out.  Guthrie's is a chicken finger and fry place with a sauce like Zaxby's.  We used to say Zaxby's could never compare to Guthrie's, but I now officially rescind that statement.   We ate, went back to the hotel, the children showered and then dropped their towels on the floor!!  No touching the floor!  They do not know rule #1 of suspect hotel rooms.  I asked the front desk for more towels. 

Saturday we got up bright and early, ate breakfast at McDonalds (that'll put a spring in your step!), bought a shirt for Emma and hats for the boys to get autographed, and made our way to the practice field.  After some debate over where to park (I held my tongue eventually), we went to the practice field and the boys were in hog heaven.  The official Auburn Football Team's practice fields!  And we were running around on them!  Probably we could have packed up and headed home after that because Auburn nirvana had been reached, but wait, there's more!  After walking around campus and touring the new basketball arena, we went to the Spring game.  We sweltered and yelled for our team - what do you yell when you are playing yourself?  I had never pondered this possibility.  Then, joy of joys! we went down on the field - the real field at Jordan-Hare Stadium, mind you - and waited for autographs.  Jack quickly lost interest; people were pushing to get to the players, and it is a little claustrophobic when you're eye-level with grown-up bellies the whole time.  So after getting a couple guys to sign his hat, we left the hat with Justin, Emma and Will and Jack ran for the end zone.  He would stand on one foot with a pretend ball on his hand and I would have to decide if he was in bounds or not when he caught the pass.  Then we would replay it and look at it again.  Then he would run down the whole field, dodging "defenders" (other folks trying to get autographs), while I tried not to lose sight of him.  Of course I lost sight, but eventually I just stayed around the 50 yard line and he would run past me every few minutes.  It doesn't get much better than that for a 7 year old football fanatic. 

Awesome day - so thankful for good weather and the opportunity to go.  We got back home around 10:45 p.m. Saturday night; Justin questioned at one point whether Josh Bynes' signature (our biggest score from the autograph session) was worth getting home so late, but of course it was.