Game Faces.

GO BRUINS!

We had quite the busy, fun weekend. We've been talking for awhile now about taking Ellie to see UCLA play football. She's gotten the 8 clap down pretty well, and she often asks me to play the fight song in the car (she calls it the Bruin Song.) On Friday morning a mom-friend of mine sent out an email trying to unload her four tickets to the game against Cal, and we jumped on them. I wasn't totally enthused about it being a 7:30pm game, but I figured we'd stay as long as we could, and better to be at a night game than frying in the sun at an afternoon game. So we let Ellie nap as long as she wanted, got loaded up with plenty of snacks and hit the road.

Our biggest miscalculation was arriving too late. We were pulling into the Rose Bowl right before kick off, but still had to park. I ended up getting out of the car with both kids while Tim finished parking, waaaaaaay out on the outer edges of the golf course (I think he actually parked back the city of Los Angeles.) Let me tell you, it's fun to have a baby on your front and a toddler riding piggy back! But we made it to our seats, which were great, and shortly thereafter Tim arrived with snacks in hand.

Ellie did a great job. She loved cheering and yelling for the Bruins. She did her touch down dance and was generally pretty well behaved. It was funny though - she kept asking to go see "the Bruin," as in either the bear statue (which she remembers from when we visited UCLA last fall) or the people in costume. I kept trying to explain to her that we WERE seeing the Bruins, down on the field. She liked the bands doing their field shows too. Adam hung out with us for a bit in his fleecy, bear-print jammies and then (surprise!) fell asleep in the ergo. He was so tired that I could actually feel him snoring.

The only downside was then the 20 minute walk back to the car. I seriously thought Tim was just taking us out to a hillside to murder us but we finally made it to our car at 10:30, Ellie yammering all the while (I was a little exhausted by the 15 hours of talking from her - I do better when it's closer to 12 hours of nonstop chatter a day.) Both kids fell asleep on the car ride home (even when Tim and I stopped at Bottega for me to run out and get snacks) but they were up early this morning. Poor babies!

It ended up working out okay because we were slated to head to the Valley for Lucas's second birthday party right at the beginning of nap time. I'd originally planned that we'd just make Ellie go without a nap, but she instead took a snoozer on the drive up, which was good for everyone. The party was lovely, and filled with all of our favorite Bruin friends. Adam got to hang out with baby Mila, my college roommate's daughte who is five days older, and Ellie was enamored with both Mila and Lucas. So many sweet little baby Bruins! And Ellie took another short nap on the way home, after our bonus detour to go and see the Bruin statue. She's no longer scared of him - she loves him and even gave him a kiss.