It's a Celebration!

Auburn University graciously decided to swing the doors of Jordan Hare Stadium wide open in order to celebrate winning the College Football National Championship. And people came. Boy, did they ever come. I won't pretend to have any idea of how many people our fair stadium holds, and I'm certainly too lazy to open another window and Google it right now, but it looked to be pretty full. I mean, look at this......

I mean, there wasn't a game being played here, folks. And these pictures were taken nearly an hour before the whole shebang started, so there was more to come.

I guess it didn't occur to me that people would come in droves from the farthest reaches to attend a celebratory presentation, but they did.

This dawned on me as I was standing in the concession line making friends with people. More on that concession line in a moment....

The best part about this whole thing was that everyone there was Auburn folk, so everyone was friendly to each other. There wasn't a lot of pushing or shoving or acting as if everyone was an enemy, but mostly smiles and War Eagles and apologies for bumping into one another.

Which is how I made friends with Amanda from Oxford, AL and her mother in the line for snacks. I apologized for standing 2 inches away from her head in order to scooch out of the way of traffic and insert myself in the line. She turned and smiled warmly which of course led to chit chat and intros. I don't know her last name, but I told her mine so I'm still waiting on my Facebook friend request.....

Anyway, she asked me where we lived. To which I was about to point toward the direction of our house and count the number of blocks we walked over to the stadium. Then I realized that she was asking from whence I hailed because she, in fact, was not a resident of our lovely village. She drove a distance to attend. And then I looked right and left, and I realized that lots of these people came from far and wide. I mean, this wasn't a celebration just for US? The residents of Auburn alone? How clouded have I become living in this town to not realize that the rest of the world loves this place, too?

Long story long, this celebration that we nestled into our already packed Saturday schedule was a pretty big deal. An estimated 78,000 people were there. And trust me, that's an estimate, because I don't think anyone counted us as we waltzed through the open gate. Joe read a number that was something like 78, 274. I kinda made that up, but we were greatly entertained that someone had an exact count that HAD to be fabricated. Either way, it was a celebration enjoyed by WAY more people than just the inhabitants and students of Auburn. Which is pretty amazing.

Now I don't even want to tell my concession stand story.

It seems trivial. Okay, okay, here it is.

Basically, Jacks begged for popcorn, I debated over standing in the longest line in the free world for burnt, overpriced popcorn versus listening to him whine about wanting popcorn for an hour, and I opted for the former. We stood in that line for an hour, were terribly disappointed with the lack of efficiency when we made it to the front of the line and felt incensed over the reason we had been standing there for an hour, dashed back to our seats which we couldn't find for a while, Jacks started to cry a little out of fear and discombobulation, I kind of wanted to cry a little over the same thing, Joe left his cell phone at home so I couldn't call him, I considered leaving at that very moment and killing Joe the next time I saw him, I used Jacks as a human shield to bust through throngs of people until we finally made it back to our seats in tears and a little sweaty even though it was freezing cold out. See? It was all pretty trivial. I mean, look at this smile.....


In the end, I'm glad we went. I'm glad we took our children to such an important event at the University that is so important to us to honor the biggest football win of all of our lives. At least for now. We hope to live to see another National Championship for Auburn. War Eagle and Amen.

We did manage to get a stranger to take our family picture in front of the stadium, which was very nice of her to do. You can lead a stranger to an SLR camera, but you can't teach her good composition now can you?

Our feet are cut off, the sign behind us is cut off, we're not centered..... No wonder we hardly get any good family pictures without paying for it. (Big shout out to Amy McDaniel at Dewdrops Photography, what what!!!). Oh well, beggars can't be choosers. Of course, minutes after this we ran into Joe's fellow art teacher Clay Cox who would have taken a gorgeous photo of us, but we had clearly moved on to tracking down our wagon that we had secured on the bike racks under Parker Hall.

Overall, it was a great experience. We came home and Nealy promptly fell asleep, and then Jacks and I whisked away to yet another birthday party. Such is Saturday life in the world of a four year old. Enjoy this pic of one quiet moment I enjoyed that day.....

Ahhh, mah sweet bebe.

War Eagle, everyone!