Sunday, January 17, 2010

Pre-Game

We had room service deliver breakfast at 7am on Sunday morning so we could get to the stadium early. After we ate and donned our team's gear, we put on our hats and gloves and started heading that way. The stadium was only 2 Light Train stops from our hotel, but we had to brave the FREEZING COLD wind for 2 blocks to get to the train station. And we had heard that the train gets really backed up on game day, so we might have to wait outside for up to an hour.

We saw a cab sitting right near the hotel, but we had heard cabs in the city were really expensive and figured it would cost too much to take a cab, so we kept walking. We got about 1/2 a block and Jason looked at me and grinned and said, "The heck with this!" and told us to go catch that cab. We got in a very warm cab and our very nice young cab driver from Nigeria drove us right to the stadium for $10! It was WELL worth it!
The boys on their first cab ride


Outside the Metrodome


Yeah, baby!

Braden's favorite guy- Adrian Peterson

After just enough time to take these few pictures outside, we were so cold, we were miserable. We looked over to the right of the big banner above Braden's head and saw a vending trailer with Vikings gear and they were putting out big heaters outside of the trailer for customers. We headed there right away and decided it would be worth it to buy something to warm up a little bit.
After about 20 minutes we figured we had outstayed our welcome hogging one of their heaters, so we decided to go checkout the "Party on the Plaza". That was the real reason we showed up to the stadium almost 2 hours before the doors opened. They had advertised all kinds of fun stuff. Activities for the kids, pictures/autographs with players, etc.

Here's one of the kid's activities they had set up

So cool!
But it was so cold outside, the boys begged us to leave the "party" and go find somewhere warm to go. In fact, there was only about 10 people walking around the "party" and some of the promised activities weren't even happening. Including the pictures/autographs with players. That's the only part we really even cared about. I'm sure those players were inside going, "There ain't no way I'm goin' out there in that cold!" And... I can't say that I blame them. I've never been so cold in my entire life. In just about 5 minutes of exposure, you couldn't feel your extremities and you hurt all over. Man, those northerners are tough to be able to live in that climate. We were miserable.

So, Super Daddy decided to go in search of shelter. We still had over an hour before we could get into the dome! He found some indoor bathrooms and decided we should split up and just spend some time hanging out in the bathrooms. As we were walking to the bathrooms, we found a huge tent that said it was the "Vikings Fan Club". We didn't know what it was, but decided to play dumb and just walk in. Worst case scenario, they'd kick us out. Come to find out, it was just a place for fans to go in and get warm! They had heaters in there that you could stand by and get warm. HALLELUJAH! We got a table and looked through the game program that we bought.

When it was about 20 minutes till the doors opened, we decided that we could probably handle the cold for 20 minutes, so we left the tent to go check and see if any of the players had ventured out. Well, they hadn't. So, we quickly checked out the others tents that were there. We found a facepainting tent and got the boys faces painted for the game.

They had a nice propane blower heater in their tent that I went and stood by, but it was still SO cold! They must be in it for the money though... they charged $6 per cheek.

Yes, the lady has plastic gloves under her knit gloves to try to keep the air out and keep her hands warm!

The guy doing Rhett's, pulled out a thermos of boiling hot water to pour in the cup to use to wet and clean his brushes. It's a good thing it was hot, because his paint was frozen! He had to put some of the hot water in the paint to be able to use it!

Vikings Fan!

Eli Manning Fan!

Well, we didn't make it the 20 minutes. After the boys got their faces painted, the boys begged us to go back into the heated tent. So, that's what we did. Then after about 15 minutes, we were able to get into the stadium!

Stadium and game pics coming tomorrow!

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