The Elser 411: Are You Ready For Some Football?

We're sports fans around here. And nothing gets us more excited than the beginning of college football season. Not only was today the first home game of the year, it was Jackson's first Kansas Jayhawks sporting event. Much to the pleasure of his mom and dad...he loved it!

As the first tailgate of the year, we were calling this one our "trial run". For one thing, we had no idea what to expect from Jackson; after all, it makes for a very long day (during both meal and nap times), outside, with an an awful lot of noise and activity for a little guy to take in. For another, we weren't 100% sure how early to arrive to stake out our spot. Our hawks are in the top 25 this year and we knew it was going to be a sell out crowd. And finally, we had a new Jayhawk canopy to debut that we had never set up before.

Our trial run turned out to be a resounding success...almost.

We timed our arrival just right and were able to park in the exact spot we had hoped for. We couldn't have asked for better weather - high in the upper 70's, sunny and a nice breeze. The new canopy went up without a hitch. Jackson was a perfect angel. In fact, he was quite popular. We had complete strangers stopping by the entire afternoon to oooo and ahhh over our little guy. I, of course, was a very proud Mommy. Drew, of course, was taking full advantage of his new found "chick magnet". We weren't expecting a huge crowd of friends for this game, but our tent was full of visitors (some that we knew, some that we didn't) the entire afternoon. Perfect strangers gathered together with the common purpose of cheering on our beloved Jayhawks. It was perfect.

Until Drew realized that the battery in the truck was dead.

And since all of the windows were down (and with no battery, there was no way to roll them up) we really couldn't leave it unattended with all of our stuff in plain sight. Which meant we didn't step foot inside the stadium for the football game.

While it could have been a total disaster, as it turned out it really wasn't that big of a deal. Even though the lot we park in is accessible by permit only, we park right at the curb. That way we aren't trapped in the lot should we need to make an early exit with Jackson. Or should we need our friends to come (thanks Lance & Billy) and give us a jump. And while we were planning to take Jackson into the stadium for as long as he would last, the start of the game fell right at his meal time so it didn't break our hearts too bad to miss this one. There will be plenty of other opportunities as the season goes on.

So we tailgated for 3 1/2 hours, jump started the truck and drove home to watch the game on TV.

I still consider our trial run a success. We learned something (hello...don't leave the truck radio on for 3 hours), have a few enhancements in mind for next time and we had a fabulous time. Oh yeah - the Jayhawks won 49-3 over Northern Colorado.

And yes Mom & Cortney...I took pictures.