Surprise Road Trip

We have spent the last few days planning a road trip for the holiday weekend. We wanted it to be a complete surprise, but nosey Janae caught on to something that Brett said and then snuck in to enough of our conversations to figure out where we were going. 😑

We told the boys they needed to get to bed early so we could leave at 8:00 in the morning. They were so excited and wanted to set their alarm for 6:45. Easton came up to our room three or four times, saying he couldn't sleep. This morning when our alarm went off, we could hear them talking in the kitchen. Now if this had been a school day, we would have been dragging them out of bed!

They were very curious as to where we were going, and asked a million questions about it before we were even out of Gatlinburg. 😁

I came prepared with my blankie, hoodie and fuzzy socks, knowing Brett would freeze me out!

We were less than a mile down the road when Brett had to pull over to clean off his window. We said "We're here!" simultaneously and the kids were underwhelmed with the surprise road trip.😂

We stopped at a few mountain views along the way. It doesn't matter that we see them every day...they are more and more beautiful every day!

Witty Brett told the kids that we had to go north before we went south. So here we are at the north...

Easton takes after his mommy and was cold too!

After we could not take anymore questions about where we were going, we decided to have a reading contest to see who could read the most pages. 

Janae read the longest but Easton read the most pages! I've said it before, but I am so blessed to have children who love to read! 

We finally arrived at our destination...Columbia, South Carolina!  One of Brett's customers is the the minor league baseball team there, The Fireflies. 

He has a suite there to take potential customers, so he invited a few people from the area that he had been in communication with.   He also invited Luke Sturtz since he goes to school there, and some friends. It was good to see someone from back home!

We got there early and they gave us a private tour of the entire ballpark! We got to go out on the field while they were warming up...

In the dugout...

 In the batting cages...

Behind the scenes...

And, of course, all around the outside. It's a brand new ballpark and owned by the same owners as the Tin Caps! 

We ordered food for our entire suite and it was delicious. I think we over ordered though... We had tons of leftovers! They're smiling here, but by the end of the night, they were holding their bellies. Okay, I was too. 😂

One of the perks of having a suite is that Mason the mascot comes to visit you. Later we saw a long line of kids waiting to get their picture taken with him. No thanks! 😁

The kids had a ton of fun. Talan and I did a lot of dancing to try and get on the big screen but no such luck. Janae kept saying "You are not my family." I'm so glad that Talan shares my love of embarrassing her. 😂

He's pretty good at air guitar too. 😁

It's the bottom of the 11th inning, 10:45 and it's tied 4-4. Looks like it's going to be a late night for fireworks and we've already lost one!