May 17th, 2013
Today I woke up
to a couple of cute little boys trying with all their might to carry on their
normal morning, while not waking up the guys sleeping on their couches! They were just playing some chess, and they
quickly moved to another room when they saw me stirring. Later as I was lying there half asleep, Camie
heard me sniffling non-stop and diagnosed me with allergies and hooked me up
with some allergy medicine. I’m supper
glad, because my eyes were heavy all day and I was sneezing, etc. anyways. I can only imagine how bad it would have been
with out the meds! Eventually the older Christiansen kids got off to school,
and we ate a delicious egg casserole for breakfast while little Wyatt painted
watercolor pictures for each of us. For
those who don’t know, we are staying with Taylor’s sister and her family- but
the trick is she married my cousin! So
it was good to be able to stay with them.
Matt’s sister Alisa (also my cousin, obvi’s…) came by in the morning
with her kids to hang out and see her very favorite cousin in the world! Haha
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| Favorite Uncle? Nah... But I tried! |
She left her son,
Owen, behind, leaving me 2 guys to practice being an uncle on! I’ve been in an unofficial no-contest contest
with Taylor as the favorite uncle in this house! Haha- Taylor obviously wins in
a landslide because he actually is their uncle and has years of hard work with
these guys behind him, but I still made a noble effort. Lots of wrestling, tickling, etc… But in the
end, I think I held my own! Haha I think
the funniest moment was when I told Owen I had a secret and picked him up, and
gave him a raspberry on the belly. I
later asked Wyatt if he wanted to hear a secret, and he grabbed his shirt and
started lifting it up while saying “yes…” in a super shy tone! Haha it was
really funny...
We headed to a
park in the morning and took batting practice.
It had rained all night long, so the field was kinda wet, but it was
still fun. We busted open a ball because
it was probably a cheaply made Wal-Mart ball. After hitting and playing catch,
we headed back to Matt and Camie’s house to shower and then went to the Mall of
America. Now, I have been to that one
mall in Newport that is huge…. And I knew MOA was huger than that. So I was expecting this incomprehensibly
larger mall, but it couldn’t have been too much larger that south coast. Just
sayin…. Anyways, it was still huge, just not as huge as I had built it up to be
in my mind. Anyways- we ate lunch there,
looked through a few stores, and a few of us bought a few things. But other than that, we were there just to
say we went there! Oh, and we stopped at
the Peeps store because Hayley had a coupon for some free stuffs, and they hit
us up big time with free samples of Mike and Ikes. Wonderful.
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| Batting Practice in a Minneapolis park |
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| The 4 guys in Mall of America |
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| Hayley getting Mike and Ike's |
After the mall,
we went out into what was now a rainy city.
We headed to a couple of pretty lakes in the suburbs of Minneapolis,
then to the sculpture garden. We walked
around the garden a bit, took some pictures, threw a baseball on the lawn in
front of the famous cherry on a spoon exhibit, and just had a good time.
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| Hay, T, EZ, and Garrett at the rainy lake |
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| Eric with a photo bomber at the sculpture gardens |
We then drove downtown and hopped out at target to get some
odds and ends, and we snagged a quick dinner at the target express. We drove passed the Metrodome, which (I am going
to sound like I did with the mall of America here) and I was once again
underwhelmed with the size of this place.
I felt like it was way smaller than any stadium I had ever seen. I don’t know…. I was expecting it to just
seem ginormous. Oh well. We went to the
river and to a bridge just by the St. Anthony Falls. It was a cool view, and we
also went down below the bridge where the water re enters the river after
supplying the old mills with water to power their mills. It was a neat little place. We then headed back downtown to park the car
and walked over to the ballpark where we met up with Matt and Camie.
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| The view from above- stadium and downtown pano |
My Boss at BYU,
Bill Hoops, is from Minnesota and suggested like 15 times that we enter from
the Right field porch, so we for sure did and he was right! We have a few traditions at these ballparks
that we like to carry on. One of them is
getting on the jumbotron if possible. As
soon as we walked in, I spotted a cameraman by a flag pole in right field, so
we headed that way. Sure enough, they raised
a Twins flag as the team ran onto the field and I was planted perfectly in the
shot. Not even 3 minutes in and we
already had our jumbotron spot checked off!
We proceeded to our seats way upstairs in the far corner down the right
field line. We enjoyed the first handful of innings from there. Buchholz, Boston’s surprise pitcher who has
opened the season 6-0 with a 1.69 ERA did well, going through the first two
innings on like 25 pitches and striking out 4 batters! The Twins hit a homerun and the Sox managed a
run at some point, too.
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| The home plate angle |
Another tradition
we have is walking a full circle around the ballpark, so in the 5th
inning, we headed downstairs to take our stroll. We like to stop at 3 places in particular to
take pictures: Behind Home plate, down the left field line, and in dead
centerfield. So we went behind the plate
and went down between innings to take a picture. Usually it is a fight with the ushers to let
us take a picture there, but the usher didn’t even bother checking
tickets. That was great, as it meant
that we would not have trouble getting anywhere at all in the stadium if they
weren’t even checking tickets behind the plate!
We went down the third base line a little bit beyond the bag and sat for
a couple of innings. There was a high school-aged guy sitting there who I
started talking to. He said he was from
KC and in the process of going to all the baseball stadiums in the nation and
he had been to a whole 9 stadiums! I acted super impressed and asked him about
his favorites and stuff, and he told us he was collecting pins at each
stadium. I was sincere in my questions
and being excited for him going to all the parks, but we were secretly laughing
inside because we are at 18, soon to be 23 stadiums! Haha but I didn’t feel
like stealing his thunder. We whispered jokes under our breath about it and
stuff. Haha
Near the end of
the game, we got up and continued our circle.
Garrett got his traditional 59-fifty hat, we took our outfield pictures,
and then plopped down in deep right center for the end of the game. The game went 10 innings and in the top of
the 10th, a fly ball was hit to left center field with a runner on
third. The two outfielders were both camped under the ball and luckily, the
centerfielder caught it, but they ran into each other as he went to throw home
and he had to double clutch in order to get the throw off. It could have been a close play at the plate
if he had only communicated with his left fielder, but who knows what would
have happened. It was too bad that they
lost eventually because either the left fielder was stubborn or the
centerfielder didn’t call him off…. Oh
well. I don’t have any ties to either team, so it ended up being just fine.
We hurried out of
the stadium, back to the car, and quickly to bed. We had to get up in the morning at 5:00 am to
make it to Chicago in time for the 12:00 noon game!
Stats:
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| The CF Angle |
Miles Traveled today: 50
Hours in the car today: 1.5
Miles traveled total: 1335
Hours in the car total: 22.5
National Monuments visited: 1
Narcotic searches: 2
Jumbotrons: 1
Scoreboard:
Eric 1-0
Garrett 1-0
Hayley 1-0
Mitch 1-0
Taylor 1-0
(Matt 1-0)
(Camie 0-1)
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