Expo b-ball game

The Clemson basketball team is going to be playing in Greenville this season while the basketball arena gets renovated. That's a win for us! We may be able to go to a few games!

To help promote their season in Greenville, the men's basketball team has been creating some buzz and doing some promotional stuff around town. Remember when they came to the Saturday market? Anyway, I got an email last week about an expo game they were having on Thursday. The best part? The game was FREE! They had fun stuff for kids set up outside the arena from 5 - 7 and the game started at 7. I hadn't given it much thought, but as the day passed on Thursday, I got a wild hair and decided that I wanted to go. It took a little convincing, but Thomas agreed, too! I mean, this is rare of us to just decide last minute to go do something. We hardly ever do anything spur-of-the-moment since having the boys - but we're getting better.

MaSha typically watches the boys for us on Thursday nights so we can go to a bible study, but the bible study group was going to a JV football game and we weren't missing an actual meeting this Thursday. I called MaSha to run the basketball plan by her and ask her if she wanted to come along, and she was game! MaSha is actually a Gamecock fan (gasp!), but is so sweet to deal with our Clemson obsession and humor us by coming along with us to these kinds of things. Sometimes she'll even wear orange. ;)

Downtown for the Clemson basketball game

We got there around 5:45 or so and got in line for face painting. They also had someone doing balloon animals and a big bounce house. There was a huge inflatable tiger. The boys didn't really like standing in line very long, but there was lots going on to distract them.

Stokes getting his face painted

Ryan and Dada

Look who we saw! It was the Tiger Cub! He was hanging out and letting everyone get pictures. I decided to go up there with the boys so I could hold Ryan. William went right up to the Tiger Cub and gave him a big hug. None of the boys was scared. They just went right up - fearless!

Cheese! Except William, who would't turn around because
he was hugging the Tiger!

MaSha and Stokes with his new sunglasses, courtesy of Verizon ha

Such a cool dude

Dada and William

Mama and Ryan

We got some dinner and went in to find seats and feed the boys.

Warm ups. Go Tigers!

Eating and waiting for the game to start

Sweet Ryan checking out the action

Eating Bojangles

Dinner!

This little guy was in his element!

Stokes and William watching the game

Action shot

Stokes is obsessed with MaSha

William loved it!

We randomly ran into Dan and Katie McDonald. Thomas and I have both worked with Dan in the past, and I am once again working with him. I didn't even know he was planning to be at the game, since he lives about an hour away in Fort Mill. It was great to run into them and meet their kids!

Katie, William and Dan

We left at halftime since it was already way past bedtime. Going to the game was such a great experience. The boys did really well and I think they had a ton of fun! This was just a cool opportunity since it was a pre-season game and was no charge and MaSha was available and willing to come be an extra set of hands for us. I really enjoyed it!
p.s. Clemson won. :)