For the love of RedSox Nation

This is one of my favorite pictures from Florida. That's my dad, Jason and seven year old Noah. Three generations of men happy as clams to stand in the hot sun on metal bleachers to watch grown men take batting practice. Ahhh.... baseball.
Spring training tickets for the Minnesota Twins went on sale today. Who cares, right? When we go down to Florida in February to visit my parents, it's always about the Red Sox. This year we wanted to mix things up a bit and see the Red Sox while they visited the Twins who also train in Fort Myers. So today at 9am I logged onto the MLB Twins site to buy tickets, and due to the high volume of traffic went to their 'virtual waiting room'. Every fifteen seconds the screen would refresh, and the idea is it would refresh and I would be able to buy tickets. Having done this before, I knew I was in for a long wait. Problem is you can't really do anything else, because when the screen pops up you only have a minute or two before you lose your spot. What to do when you have to stare at a blank screen for who knows how long? I put on NPR. I called a friend. I took my 15 seconds and ran to get our paper shredder and sat here shredding papers. Thank goodness our bathroom is close by and we have wireless!

Fifty five minutes after entering the virtual waiting room, I finally made it to the so-called ticket window. How come after less than an hour, the best available tickets for the game I wanted was the last sections of the upper deck, way down the base line? Sigh... the good thing is that there really are no bad seats at spring training. Now our fingers are crossed that our favorites Jacoby Ellsbury and Dustin Pedroia will actually play that night. Opening day will be here before we know it.

Jason loves a good cannoli!

I'm posting this simply because I can. (tee hee hee) Jason was in heaven eating his chocolate chip cannoli from Mike's Pastries in the North End. I hope in 20 years doctors aren't bypassing around that cannoli!! The kids also got in on the action and tried bites of everything. How come they'll try Italian pastries and not the stew I made last week??

A day in the big city for the Olympic Gymnastics Show

Today we had a very exciting day, we're all exhausted. This morning we drove into Boston and picked up Jason's cousin Luke - who is travelling the country performing with the US Olympic Gymnastics team - at his hotel. We went over to the North End and got in line for Pizzeria Regina to open. A line... for pizza? You have to eat there to understand. It was that good. Luke had to get over to the Garden to get ready for the show, so we continued around the North End. We explored the Old North Church, and enjoyed cannoli in Paul Revere Plaza. It was absolutely gorgeous weather, and beautiful.

Once we got to the show, it was super exciting to see Luke perform with all the gymnasts. We decided he's a much better dancer than most of them. The arena was filled with thousands of girls ages 5-12, all of them screaming on the top of their lungs. Alanya was in heaven, and Ben and Noah thought it was pretty cool too. After the show, we pulled out our backstage passes and caught up with Jason's other cousin, Drew and his friend, and got in line to have our programs signed. The gymnasts have been living out of hotels, travelling in coach buses for weeks, and actually sort of grumpy! They just passed the programs down the table signing things and barely looked up. Unfortunately, my memory of Shawn Johnson is of her complaining to the manager if they could move the line along faster, she wanted to get out of there. Oh well. We were excited to see Luke, and he was happy we were there. A few more pictures and he was back on the bus and on his way to Connecticut.

Thanks Luke to treating us to such a wonderful day!