America's Favorite Pastime

This year for DW's birthday, I planned a trip to Atlanta to see a Braves game, with Adam & Lauren.

Adam ordered our tickets and booked our rooms, because while I can book a hotel, I don't have a clue when it comes to tickets. 

We left early Saturday morning when Grammy & Pop got to our house to stay with the girls. 

We made it to Atlanta in time for a late lunch. 

Thanks to some googling and Lauren's "Seen on TV" food app, we picked a great spot to eat. 

It already had us at the name- "Daddy D'z" - Daddy D for Devin, who's trip it was, after all. :)

I'm not going to pretend like I wasn't a little skeptical when we pulled up.

Luckily, I kept in mind the "we ain't pretty, but we're good" that I read on their website. :)

The minute we walked in the door, though, we knew we'd made a good choice- the smell alone was enough.

The ribs were so good and the fried okra was the best.

After lunch, we checked into our hotel and rested up for a few minutes before walking to Underground.

After some quick shopping for DW a new Braves hat, we caught the shuttle to Turner Field. 

This passionate fan was on the bus with us. I love it when people go "all out"!

Except, some people who may take it too far... Exhibit A:

Ha. :) Lauren found this Chuck Norris beard hat at Lids when DW was getting his new hat.

It had been raining off and on all afternoon, but by the time we got to the stadium, it was pretty steady. We were early, so we just walked around and tried to stay dry. 

I was so happy to see a picture of the Braves team from the mid-90's-- those are the Braves (David Justice, John Smoltz, Tom Glavin, Chipper Jones, Greg Maddox, etc.) that I remember from G5 channel 6. My grandparents had one of the massive satellite dishes back then and they were huge Braves fans. After church on Sundays you could bet Papa would have one of us turning the satellite to G5 and changing the channel to 6 so he could watch the game on TBS. :)

We had great seats for the game and at 7:00 the rain stopped. It was perfect timing for the 7:20 first pitch.

The game was slow moving at first. I forgot that about baseball. It's just slower and more quiet than the football games we're usually together at. :) 

Things got really exciting through, in the 7th inning (I think) when the Braves came back and scored two runs to tie the game.

By the bottom of the 9th it was still tied and so we got some "free baseball"--- we ended up getting 6 innings of "free baseball"... And honestly by that point, we were just ready for somebody to score and what seemed like the never-ending game to be over- even if it meant the Braves lost. My shoes had gotten wet earlier in the night and my toes were freezing. I was pretty sure gangrene was fixing to set in. 

It started raining again in the 13th inning, it was after midnight and we (at least Lauren & I) were over it. I think the guy, in the corner of this pic was probably over us, too! ;)

In the end, the Braves came up short, but it was still an exciting and great game. It was such a fun day... Just LONG. We caught a cab and got back to the hotel around 1:30. It's been quite a while since we've seen that hour. 

Sunday morning, we headed south back to the land of heat and humidity. 

It was quite an adventure even if it was just for one night. We didn't catch a foul ball, win the 50-50 drawing or even see the braves win, but we ate good, laughed a lot and made a few more memories. Good times for sure.

~amw~