Little Brick Houses for You and Me: Tailgating

Labor Day weekend has come and gone and it brought one of the best parts of fall...NDSU football and tailgating! It was so fun to be back in those parking spaces in that lot! It is so festive! It seemed like we hadn't been gone long at all since the season went into winter last year as the Bison advanced through the playoffs and the final game before Frisco was the weekend before Christmas!

It was a pretty good day, although it was a bit summery for football season with hot temperatures and blazing sun. It was nice though. I like to enjoy hot weather as long as possible. The only bad part is that it is hard to make wardrobe decisions knowing that the stadium will probably be chilled and when the game ends the temperature will have probably dropped.

I was worried about bringing Ben and spent time during the weeks leading up to the season preparing myself for tailgating as a mother with a child present and not like a beer swilling drunk with not a care in the world...or as a sober and large and in charge pregnant person feeling the minutes crawl by while everyone else was a beer swilling drunk...

It wasn't that bad, I guess. I had a few drinks but was very responsible. Ben was mostly good although I worried about having him out in the sun during the heat of the day. I left our baby sunscreen in the car which had to be parked in a dorm parking lot several blocks away but was able to borrow some and otherwise just tried to keep him in the shade as much as possible. He got alot of attention and many people were around to hold him, including my parents and Justin's mom. So far, so good...

Arriving at the scene.

Grandpa and Ben!

Some makeshift sun protection so he didn't have to have sunblock smeared all over his head!

The best part of the weekend was that I felt almost like my old self again! People say that after you have a baby you can't imagine life without them but I can very easily imagine my pre-baby life...it was fun and full of freedom and friends and me doing whatever I wanted and although I wanted to have a baby and chose it it is hard to make such an adjustment after, oh, 10 years of post high school freedom and self centered living. And also...my clothes stopped fitting for almost a year. I was thrilled when I was going through the pictures on my camera screen and saw this picture and thought "hmmm they all look cute..." and then looked closer and realized one of them was me! I look like myself again and by that I mean my old size again.

After the game my parents, who were staying overnight, watched Ben and we went to a favorite bar and I had so much fun that I am still thinking about it several days later. Nothing special even happened. It was just so invigorating to be with old friends in a fun environment. So anyway, nothing will ever be the same but I realized that my old life doesn't have to come to an abrupt end.

Ben handled the actual game quite well. Justin bought some ear protection headphones since the crowd gets really loud, we sit near the marching band, and they blast fireworks whenever the Bison get a touchdown, which happened reguarly at this game. The score was 52-0! He kept them on his head so that was good.

Now, completely changing the subject...I had something on here about a month ago about how I entered Ben in the Gerber photo contest. Voting has started and I realized today when I voted and looked closely at the rules that you have to have a Facebook account and "like" Gerber's page to be able to vote so I guess if you want you can do those things and vote once a day. As far as I can tell, you can't even see how many votes your kid has so it is hard to know if, after a few days, he or she actually has enough to contend or if it is just a dumb waste of time to try to coerce everyone you know to vote. I know no one appreciates being bombarded with these sorts of requests so I am not going to be a huge pain about it five times a day.

https://www.facebook.com/Gerber?sk=app_309623475794647&app_data=