Spring Training - Surprise, AZ

 This year, for Spring Break, we went to Spring Training in Arizona.  I went in with the attitude that it would be fun, but I was just the tagalong on a guys trip.  ;)  I had no idea that I would enjoy it every bit as much as the boys!  Seriously, it was in my top five trips of all time.  I LOVED it!

March 7th - Maryvale Park  Rangers vs. Brewers

My initial reaction was that it was much warmer than I thought it would be.  Ha!  I had scoffed when Wade told me to pack shorts (we had just thawed out from a snow/ice the week before at home).  I snuck in jeans and hoodies thinking that he was steering me wrong.  ;)  He was right.  We sweat a ton that first day!

Every practice stadium has their trademark thing that they do - something that they do at their home field as well.  At the Brewers' stadium, they had the sausage races.  Owen thought that was great fun!  Since that was the first park that we had been to, he assumed that the other parks would do the same thing.  He kept asking "When is the sausage race?" at the other parks for the rest of the week.  Ha!

Drew caught a foul ball!  Actually, it bounced off of Clayton's glove and right into Drew's hands.  Clayton was less than thrilled that Drew was the final recipient.  All's fair in love and baseball!

 March 8th - Surprise Stadium  Rangers vs. Indians

We were walking up to the ticket window in full Rangers gear when a lady stopped us to ask if we had tickets to the game.  We told her that we didn't yet.  She told us that she worked for the City of Surprise and that the city would love to give our family free tickets to the game along with a $50 gift certificate to the souvenir shop.  AND, the tickets were on row R behind home plate.  Yes, please!!!  Such a wonderful blessing!  We had the best time watching the Rangers beat the Indians!

 Awesome seats!  We sat right next to the lady that sang the National Anthem.  :)

 Drew picked a stuffed animal with his portion of the gift card.  No *surprise* (see what I did there?) there!

 Our vacation schedule was consistent:  wake up whenever, watch baseball, swim in the heated pool, clean up for dinner, eat, sleep, repeat.  So wonderful!  I am so grateful for airline miles and hotel points that bless us with quality family time away.  :)

March 9th - Sloan Park  Cubs vs. Padres

I think that the Cubs had my favorite field!  I loved the replica of their sign (the typed in your name when you had your picture made) and they had Portillo's hot dogs!  YUM-o!!!

 Day 3 of baseball games and this 3 year old went from laughing, to....

 sacked out within 5 minutes.  Ha!  Owen was soooo good on this trip!  He napped during games and ate his weight's worth of peanuts.  We never had to leave a game or even step away from our seats on his account.  He was happy, happy, happy the whole time!  So very proud of our littlest baseball fan!

 Three across in the hideaway bed...  Wonder how many more years we will be able to pull this off?!?!

 March 10th - Hiking by our hotel then to the Tempe Diablo Stadium

 Drew insisted that I take his picture with this pose every time that we saw a cactus.  Ha!  Silly boy...

 These were our most expensive tickets of the week, and the stadium wasn't anything super special.  Still a fun day, though!

 And that's a wrap.  4 stadiums in 4 days.  I think that we could all use a nap.  ;)

 March 11th - Flight Home

I had the pleasure of sitting between two of the sweetest little travel buddies.  Man, I love them!

This was such a great trip!  I really, really, really hope that Spring Training becomes a Carpenter tradition.  This mama sure would love that!