Anniversary and a Ball Game

Saturday was our anniversary -- can you believe 17 years! I can't. Then again, I just got a thing in the mail about my 20th high school reunion this year. That is just crazy! I can't be getting that old, can I? I must be...

For our anniversary we ended up taking the whole family to an Amarillo Dillas baseball game. We went with some friends of ours, the Roberts family. We picked this particular night because it was "Super Sonic Saturday" and Sonic (the drive-in restaurant) was sponsoring the night and offering free admission. Can't beat free, although they'll charge you an arm and a leg for a bottle of water once you get in (seeing as how you can't bring in your own).

We first met up with the Roberts at a park not far from the ballpark and had some yummy pizza and cake (leftover from the Primary activity earlier that day). (And note that these pictures did not turn out the greatest -- I had changed some settings on my camera for the Primary activity earlier that day and forgot to change them back -- oops!)

Then we headed over the stadium. Not familiar with the Amarillo Dillas? We weren't really, either. They are part of United League Baseball, which from what I can tell is sort of a small independent league that includes 6 teams -- 5 from Texas and 1 from Lousiana (a couple of the Texas teams are clear down by Brownsville, so I imagine these players spend a LOT of time riding buses!).

The Dillas mascot, naturally, is an armadillo:

Their ballpark is the Amarillo National Bank Dilla Villa:

Since it was free admission, it was open seating. We ended up sitting up pretty high towards the 3rd base side:

The kids seemed to have fun, although I don't think they really followed the game. The first inning lasted about 40 minutes. We ended up leaving about in the 5th inning I think. The final score was 14-6 (they played the Edinburg Coyotes).

At one point during the game, we looked around to see where Hannah was (she and the other girls kept climbing up behind us to the top, etc.). We finally spotted her over in some type of club box area just over from us:

She had found an empty chair and made herself right at home, clapping along and everything. :-)

Every time the Dillas hit a home run, they would ring an old bell hanging in the ballpark. (Personally, I thought they rang it a few too many times, but maybe that was because we were sitting fairly close to it.) The other interesting thing was that after at least one of them home runs (I wasn't really paying attention after the others), the player who hit it came back and walked along the fence behind home plate and collected money that people came up and passed through the fence. Here's a picture I snagged off the Dillas web site:

A lot of people came down to the fence to give him money. What's up with that??

I have to end with this picture -- Happy Anniversary, Brian! I love you!