Friday Night Lights

My Family LOVES football. (Okay, Rosey Posey only likes it if she's AT a game). It's such a unique atmosphere: team spirit, competition, community, and just the enjoyable fall air! Our family enjoys everything from going to a HS game, to watching collage football all day Saturdays, to participating in a fantasy NFL football league. It's the best 4.5 months out of the year!! :D

This past Friday, we braved a local HS game for the first time as a family. We left Little Lady (13mo. old) with my folks, dressed in the school colors and headed out the door to the unknown: Would the kids enjoy the game, where should we park, did Bubee even need a ticket, how much should we

budget, surely we can eat there... Since we don't have kids at the school I didn't even know where to get tickets. I was able to call the school that day and find out tickets were $7 each, but that's about all I knew.

Our first hurdle was parking. We opted to park a little bit away from the school and walk, but even that proved difficult. The first place we parked, unloaded and was headed to the school when my husband spotted a sign: "No School Parking". {insert mommy grumbles here} So we all loaded back up and searched for another spot. We finally hesitantly parked across from the school at a business park (praise God we didn't get towed!).

After a short trek across a 4-lane road with 2 kids in tow, we made it! At this point we were just fallowing the crowd to find our way. Found the front gate and got tickets. Fortunately Bubee was free!

The first thing I noticed was all the vendors. I quickly realized today was the "backyard brawl" (the opposing team was from a school only about 4 miles away) so there was LOTS of businesses from the community. We made our way to the stand collecting lots of flyers, goodies, and souvenirs. I was tickled pink to see that one of the flyers was 6 FREE items from our local Chik-fil-a!  YUM!

Once we made it to the stands I realized we would be spending the night sitting on concrete. The stands was nothing more than concrete stairs: no padding, no back, just concrete! :/ Fortunately the kids didn't mind too much.

Rosey Posey and I made our way to the concession stand to grab dinner and left the boys to watch the warm-ups. I was so glad we got there early as the concession stand line only grew all night. Chik-fil-a sandwiches and cheeseburgers, not the healthiest of dinners, but some of the BEST football food!

After eating, we opted to sit the kids on the seats in front of us. This made it so much easier to watch both the game and the kiddos. It took him a little bit, but once Bubee realized he could make as much noise as he wanted to when the home team scored he started giving his 'outdoor voice' a work out.

About mid way through the second quarter the kids started to get restless. So we let them get face paints. Chik-fil-a was doing free face painting with the school colors/logos.This really helped brake up the time sitting and allowed the kids to experience more of the team spirit.

The half time show at any HS or collage football game is one of my favorite parts of Fall. Not sure why, but I love to watch a marching band. We are blessed to live so close to Lassiter as their marching band has been in the Macy's Thanksgiving day parade many times and not to mention the numerouse bowl parades (Rose, Orange, and Citrus). It's always wonderful to watch them!

The night was wonderful! The kids enjoyed the game. Bubee LOVED getting to dance and cheer real loud. Rosey Posey liked the face painting and seeing a few of her friends. Chris enjoyed watching football, and I was just happy to spend some time out of the house with most of the family.

Takeaway Tips

• Call the school ahead of time to find out about tickets, parking, etc.
• Bring a soft stadium seat. Your back will thank you!
• Pay for parking. The $5 it would of cost us would have been so worth it to avoid the head ache of finding a 'tow-free' parking spot and crossing 4 lanes of metro-Atlanta traffic. 
• Go ahead and take any flyers, who knows: it could be a FREE dinner ;)
• Budget! While the food there was great, it wasn't the cheapest. Take a little extra and indulge some.
• If you can, sit the kids INFRONT of you not beside! This will give you the best view of the game while still supervising kids.