Tag: adventures

TODAY is the best day of my life!

Well, maybe you’ve heard that the Superbowl is coming to Indy on Sunday?

It’s just a little football game.

But you know what the BIG news was?  THE TODAY SHOW WAS BROADCASTING FROM DOWNTOWN!

Guys.  I love the Today show.  It’s, like, my favorite.

One of the things on my Bucket List was being in “the crowd” on the Today show.  For serious.  (And now that I’ve written it down I’m kind of embarrassed to admit it.)

So last week when they announced they were broadcasting from Indy this week on Friday – Monday, we were SO in.  In fact, this is how in we were: Joey took the morning off to make this happen for me.  He is a rockstar.

THANKS, JOEY!!!

A couple days ago, Angel’s husband Chang also became a rockstar because HE took the day off so she could come with us!

And that’s how it became a party at my house at 6:00 a.m. this morning.

Should I mention that I was so excited last night that I couldn’t sleep until after 1 am?  So when the alarm went off at 5:30, it felt super lame.  But we got up, we got ready, and we got in the car.

We drove down and parked in one of the garages near the convention center.  I am not going to disclose how much we paid for parking because it was a shameful amount of money, but I know from a Very Reliable Source that the cost for that same garage has increased by $20.00 in the last 4 hours.  I think that makes me feel less bad?

Angel brought her carrier and we loaded Analie up.

Analie was fully dressed in an undershirt, leggings and socks underneath her PJs, was also wearing a hoodie and covered in several blankets.  Oh, and a hat.

Poor girl was so tired and confused.

But she was a champ!  She didn’t fuss at all the entire morning; she just looked around sleepily at everything.  YAY ANA!

We ran upstairs and walked the two or three blocks to the broadcast site, and I think half of Indianapolis had beaten us there!  It was packed with screaming people waving their signs.  We didn’t get very close, but that’s OK.  Just being part of the crowd was so fun.

See that big gray post in the right third of the shot?  And that cute little lady in the white jacket?  That’s ANN CURRY, guys.

We heard buzz in the crowds behind us that Al was going to zipline at 7:30, so since our spot wasn’t very good for watching the broadcast, we moved to see if we could see Al go flying above our heads.

Sure enough, we did!  (That’s him in the top right of the photo.)  He totally looked right at me.

We lined up on the street by the end of the zipline and waited with a small crowd for a few minutes while Al did the weather from up in the tower.

Ana did all the beautiful coloring on that sign herself.  (And she got it all over her foot in the process.)

AND THEN AL ROKER WALKED PAST US.  (Also some IMPD officers.)

After that we decided to walk through Superbowl Village and over to Monument Circle and see the big Superbowl letters.

That’s when we realized how cold it was outside.

And by this point, our Miss decided she’d really rather not be in the carrier for awhile.  She wanted to be able to actually see what was going on.  (She’s too short to see much over the carrier.  Poor thing’s going to be a midget.)

Superbowl Village was OK, I guess.  It probably would have been ten times cooler if things were open.  But it was 7:45 am, and most visitors were probably still having their coffee in their hotel bathrobes at that time of day.

IF they were awake at all.

Analie was getting to the point where she was wondering why SHE was awake.  (We did not pose her like this.  It was hilarious.)

We made it to the Superbowl letters just as the sun was coming up!

And you’re wondering what Angel’s sign says?  Uh…”Chang is the Baby Ninja”.  I was really tired last night when I made it and it was the best thing I could come up with at the time.

After Monument Circle we all realized we were starving.  So we hit up a Panera and got bagels and tried to warm up some.

Have you ever seen a more sleepy pair of eyes in the entire world?  (I even put her to bed at 5:30 last night knowing we’d be getting her up an hour early!)  We’re going to have another early night tonight, I think.

I am so glad we were crazy and got up early to do this.  Sure, you’d need a magnifying glass to find us on TV (we found ourselves!), but just being a part of the spirit of everything was so worth it.  It made me feel like I was part of something in my adopted hometown.

Now I need to feed an early lunch to my exhausted baby girl so I can put her down for an early nap.  Then Angus needs a bath.  You don’t want to know why.

And we’re back to  business as usual.

Author name:
Discussion:
5 Comments

Back in the Day …

A couple of weeks ago, much to my chagrin, Chang and Angel stumbled upon a DVD on our shelf and made us watch it.  I’m not even sure what this particular DVD was doing on our shelf in the first place.  I think it technically belongs to the Parents, but at some point which I do not remember, we must have borrowed it from them. Why, I do not know, as I do not tend to enjoy subjecting myself to the kind of torture that is watching that DVD.

You see, it is a home video from the year of 1995. You know, the year of big hair, leotards, and stirrup pants.  It was also the year I turned thirteen and suffered from all of the above.  That was the year all of us kids got together with our childhood friends, Nicki and Dustin, and produced a play based on Adventures in Odyssey’s episode “The Vow.”  For years, it had been our favorite radio drama, but this was the year we were going to turn it into our very own production.  I, however, was entering the teen years, and it wasn’t necessarily “cool” to listen to radio drama anymore.  My younger siblings hadn’t caught up with the trends yet and were still obsessed, so they spent months writing the scripts (and trying to understand what terms like “fade-away jumper” and “documentaries” were), building the sets, and rehearsing parts.  Nicki and I were roped into playing the parts of Donna and Jesse and grudgingly went along with it.  In the end, we invited our parents, grandparents, and a lonely neighbor down the street to our live performance.

In the moment of putting stuff like that together, you have no idea how humiliating it will be years down the road. The movie is probably not as embarrassing to The Brother, as he rocked in his Lakers Jersey, or to The Kid, who was five and Just. Plain. Adorable in his walk-on role.  But for me, it’s one of those movies that makes me cover my face and watch through my fingertips due to my bad hair and oldschool fashions.

However, it is good for one thing, and that is comic relief.  So, despite the fact that I said I never wanted anyone else to see this again, I gotta admit it is Highly Amusing and may be worth the humiliation I may suffer in order to share it with the rest of you.  It won’t be winning any awards, but it always gives my family a lot of laughs every time we watch and reminisce.

Kids, don’t try this at home. Unless you want to be subject to blackmail at some later point in your life.

Author name:
Discussion:
6 Comments
Older entries