Our Week - The One with the Georgia vs. Notre Dame Game

We had a fantastic week, y’all, and we had one of the best weekends I’ve had in a long time!  Settle in, y’all are in for a fun one today…

Monday, September 16

I started the week out with a dentist appointment first thing Monday morning.  My appointment went well and since my TMJ issues have subsided somewhat, we’re spreading out my appointments to every eight weeks now.  I’m still clinching my jaw at night, but having the new bite guard and newly established bite has helped tremendously with my headaches and jaw strain.  I’m hoping to be released from the TMJ dentist really soon. 

After the dentist, I got in a good treadmill workout and then spent the rest of the day running errands and doing laundry. 

Tuesday, September 17

Tuesday was another gym treadmill workout and then I had lots more errands to run including my annual skin check at the dermatologist.  I just started getting these skin checks last year and it’s something I’ll continue to do from here on out.  I was once a tanning bed goer as most girls were in the late nineties and early 2000s, and even though I only went for a few weeks each year, it’s still so important to get checked every year. 

I went to a different dermatologist this year as I wasn’t too impressed with the one I went to last year, and I had a much better experience this time.  The appointment was painless and super fast (I was literally in and out in less than 15 minutes!) and I got another clean bill of health.  Peace of mind for another year!  So ladies, this is your reminder – get your skin checked!!!!  It’s so important!

The rest of Tuesday was laundry, laundry, laundry and then it was time to pick up the kids.  The temps these last few weeks have been absolutely ludicrous (every time I type the word ludicrous I always want to type Ludacris.  Hahahaha.) and I’m completely over seeing 100+ degrees on the car thermometer. 

Monday and Tuesday evening we had no sports or activities so we were able to come straight home from school, get in PJs, and snuggle in early for the evening.  While Jacob did homework, Olivia and I went upstairs and she read to me while I folded laundry.  I just love listening to this sweet girl read and I treasure this view.

Wednesday, September 18

Wednesday I spent the day at home, working on the blog, getting some things done, and before I knew it, it was 2:30 and time to pick up the kids.

Jacob had his third baseball game Wednesday afternoon at 5:45 and it was freaking hot as hades.  Seriously, OVER IT.  Anyway, Jacob’s team was up, like, 8 or 9-1 after the first couple of innings, and then somehow, the other team just started having their very own personal homerun derby.  Eeks.  We ended in a tie, 12-12, so that’s better than a loss, but it still hurts that we couldn’t get the win after being up by so many runs early on in the game.

Jacob ended up getting another single and he also did some good fielding the one time the ball came his way in right-center field (at this age they have two center-fielders).  Since these kids are 5-8 years old most of them can’t quite hit in the outfield yet so the outfielders don’t get a lot of action.  Lol. 

And as usual Olivia had the best time playing with all of the baseball sisters.  They are so sweet together and they have the best time!

Thursday, September 19

Thursday morning I had a Home and School Association meeting first thing and then I spent the rest of the day running errands and blogging.  Olivia had ballet/tap right after school let out, and then we went home to get homework done, and I cooked breakfast for dinner… one of our favorites. 

While I was cooking, Jacob was upstairs taking his shower, and all of a sudden, I heard him start screaming his head off.  It scared me so bad, I legit thought he was injured or dying or something.  Turns out, when he got out of the shower, there was a giant roach crawling around in the bathroom.  He'd never seen one in real life, especially one that big, and he FREAKED OUT.  

When I got up there and saw it, I started panicking, too, because I'm so terrified of roaches I can't even get near them to kill them.  Meanwhile, that nasty little thing left the bathroom and went straight into Jacob's bedroom under his dresser.  I almost fainted.

Brian was out mowing the lawn, so I ran down the stairs to grab him, and he was able to scare it out from under the dresser and kill it.  WHEW.  Neither Jacob nor I would have slept that night if he hadn't been able to kill it.  

We've lived in our house for TEN WHOLE YEARS and we've somehow managed to never see a roach in the house the entire time.  We have pest control, obviously, so I have no clue where it came from or if there are more or what, but Brian investigated the entire bathroom and couldn't find traces of any others.  I'm praying it was just a fluke, but now I'm legit walking around the house in close-toe shoes at all times and I'm super paranoid about opening cabinets and drawers.  

We had a good run with our ten-year streak, y'all, aaaand now it's time to burn the house down.  

Thursday evening we moved bible study from the usual house to my friend Becky’s house, which is super convenient for me because she lives about seven minutes up the road from me.  We had a smaller group because several people couldn’t make it, so we snapped a pic to send to the other ladies in our group text who couldn’t be there.  And yes, we’re drinking beer during our bible study.  #Catholics

Friday, September 20

Friday was BUSY.  I was preparing to go out of town for the weekend so I had to do all the things – Walmart for some last minute tailgating supplies, the post office to drop a package, the gas station to find a Styrofoam cooler, pack myself, prepare everything for the kids for the weekend since my MIL was keeping them, etc.  Seriously, all the things. 

Just after lunch, I grabbed my steamer to get the wrinkles out of my new Amazon dress.  The steamer wasn’t working, so I grabbed the iron, turned it on low, and I’ll be darned if I didn’t burn a hole right through my new dress.  FACE PALM.  The tag on the dress says that it’s safe to iron on low, but y’all, IT’S NOT.  Looking back, I realized I probably should have ironed it with another fabric between the dress and the iron, but by then it was already too late.  So what’s a girl to do?  Leave the house immediately in search of another dress! 

Georgia fans had started a request for all of the fans to wear black to the game anyway, so in the end I was glad I was forced to buy something different.  Pretty much everyone wore black to the game, so I’m glad I didn’t end up wearing red.  I hit up a ton of stores Friday – TJ Maxx, Ross, Marshall’s, Kohl’s, and Forever 21 + several local boutiques and I couldn’t find anything in black or even red for that matter.  Finally, at the last boutique I tried, I found a cute, black dress that I knew would be perfect for the warm weather, so I grabbed it and headed straight to the school to pick up the kids in the car line. 

Since I had wasted two hours looking for a dress I was a hot mess by the time I got home with the kids.  I still had to finish packing and get ready for the weekend plus get everything ready for Jacob’s baseball game at 5:45.  Sheesh. 

I somehow managed to get everything done just in time, and the four of us headed out around 5 to Jacob’s game.  He ended up getting two singles, both of which were RBIs, and he was batted in once by another player for a run of his own.  The team won 12-0, too!  Slowly but surely he’s improving and I just love watching him do his thang on the field!

After the game, we had a celebratory (and quick) dinner at Panera with my parents, and then we headed home to finish packing and get everyone in the bed since we had an early morning Saturday.

Saturday, September 21

Saturday… ohhhh Saturday.  What fun it was!  We were up and out the door bright and early to head to Athens with some friends for the Georgia vs. Notre Dame game.  We knew going in that it was going to be a HUGE deal so we wanted to get there as early as possible since the school was expecting record-breaking crowds. 

My MIL and step-FIL kept the kids for us, so we kissed them goodbye, swung by our friends’ house to grab them, and then we hit the road for Athens.  ESPN College GameDay was in Athens for the game, so we fired up YouTube TV and we watched it on the drive there… made the drive go much faster, that’s for sure!

All hotels and Airbnbs in Athens were booked solid for nearly a year leading up to the game, but we were able to snag a newly listed Airbnb just a few weeks prior.  The owner was kind enough to let us check in early, so that was our first stop when we arrived in town.  We were able to unpack, leave the car (having a free place to park – or anywhere to park – is priceless on a day like that), and freshen up before heading out to tailgate.  And the house was so cute!

As luck would have it, our house just happened to be a mere 0.7 mile walk from my aunt and uncle’s tailgate, so we didn’t even have to Uber.  It was a beautiful day, too, so that made the walk even better, even if it was a little on the hot side.  We weren’t sure if anyone would have room to store our regular cooler after the tailgate ended and we didn’t want to have to walk it all the way back to the house before the game, so we had to kick it old school and rock the Styrofoam coolers.  Hahahaha. 

Kickoff wasn’t until 8:10 PM so we had a long time to tailgate.  My aunt and uncle tailgate in the same spot every time, and they go all out with a full spread of food – barbecue, chicken nuggets, chicken salad, chips, dips, sweets, everything! – tents and chairs, and satellite TV so we can watch all of the other football games while we tailgate.  They have two kids (my cousins), Wil and Shelby, who both graduated from UGA, so they constantly have people coming and going at their tailgate.  We were able to spend lots of good time with them this time and I was excited to see my cousin, Wil.  He’s the Assistant Director of Equipment for the football team so we don’t get to see him a lot, and it was nice to get to see him before he had to head off to work. 

We spent the next few hours eating, drinking, watching football, and hanging out and before we knew it, it was time to take down the tailgate and head to the game. 

We all headed to the stadium just after 6 and the city of Athens was ROCKIN’, y’all.  I’ve never seen so many people there ever.  We walked through massive crowds of tailgaters and by the time we arrived at the bridge that overlooks the stadium, it was packed out, too.  We headed into the stadium a little earlier than we usually do and it was a good thing we did because the stadium was pure insanity.  It’s never been so packed ever… especially that early.  The school did add extra temporary seating to the stadium so it ended up being a record number for attendance in the school’s history with over 93,000 people! 

The pregame traditions at UGA are my absolute favorite, and we went through the entire 20 minute ritual as the sun was setting.  It was stunning and my pictures just don’t do it justice.  The pregame ritual kicks off with The Star Spangled Banner and since this game was so huge, The Star Spangled Banner concluded with a flyover by four F-16 fighter jets – SO AWESOME.  After the jets flew over, we fell into the rest of the ritual – the school’s alma mater, the Battle Hymn of the Bulldog Nation, Saturday Night’s Alright, and Baba O’Riley.  The school had a new, fancy light system installed, and they made their debut during Baba O’Riley.  Y’all, that stadium was ROCKIN’!!  People were dancing and singing and going nuts.  Those new lights are freaking awesome.  Brian and I both agreed we want to go to every single home night game from here on out just for that.  Haha.

The game ended up being super close the whole time… definitely a nail-biter considering all of the experts had been calling for a runaway on Georgia’s part.  While that definitely made it even more exciting, it was also a frustrating game because of a couple of bad missed calls in Notre Dame’s favor by the officials plus two faked injuries by Notre Dame to slow our momentum.  Being Catholic, I’ve always liked Notre Dame, so I was pretty disappointed in their players and coaching staff for pulling the ol’ fake injury stunt, one of which was blatant.  That said, I have nothing but wonderful things to say about the Notre Dame fans!  We saw many of them throughout the day and chatted with a few, and all were just so friendly and kind.  I hope that all of the Georgia fans were as friendly and wonderful to them as they were to us. 

The most important thing of the night was that our boys got the WIN, we had a BLAST, and it was one of my favorite game experiences to date.  My favorite part of the whole night (besides the win) was the light show at the start of the fourth quarter.  We already have a tradition to hold up our cell phone lights at the start of the fourth quarter while the band plays the theme song from Superman, but this time right after that the stadium immediately started a light show with RED lights.  The crowd went wild and everyone was dancing and shouting and was just the best atmosphere you could ever ask for at a game.  As a matter of fact, we were SO loud in there during the game that Notre Dame ended up having six false starts and they had to use several timeouts because they couldn’t hear to get several of their plays off in time.  It was just crazy. 

After the game, we all breathed a sigh of relief and we sat in the stadium for a few minutes to allow time for it to clear out.  We weren’t heading home that night so we had nowhere to be and no reason to rush.  We finally got going about 20 minutes after the game and we made the mile long walk back to our Airbnb where we all collapsed on the couches.  By that point it was 1:30 AM but we were all too hyped up to go to sleep.  We ended up hanging out in the living room for a bit before calling it a night just before 2 AM.  And then I still couldn’t fall asleep!  Ha! 

Sunday, September 22

We were all up between 8 and 9 Sunday morning to get ready and then we stopped for brunch at J. Christopher's on the way out of town.  B and I both had the maple toast (thick challah bread soaked in maple and vanilla batter, grilled and served with confectionery sugar and maple syrup) and a side of bacon and it was deeee-lish!  Tasted just like fall! 

After breakfast we made the drive back home, dropped Randi and Donnie off at their house, and went back to our babies!  Man oh man, I miss them so much when we’re gone!!!!  They had spent the night at my MIL and step-FIL’s for the first time ever and my MIL said that they both did wonderfully!!  She said that they played well together the whole time and that they had a blast.  While we were gone they baked and decorated homemade cookies, watched a couple of movies, picked some veggies from the garden, ate fresh raspberries straight from the garden, and Jacob even squeezed in a little bit of batting practice with Poppie.  All in all a successful weekend!

Sunday afternoon was spent unpacking and then being lazy on the couch snuggling with the babies, watching the Falcons play, and playing video games.

We headed over to my parents’ house Sunday evening to celebrate my momma whose birthday is actually TODAY!  HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MOMMA!  WE LOVE YOU!

She didn’t want me to have to cook since we’d been out of town so she ended up cooking her own birthday dinner, but I fully intend to cook for her this coming weekend to make up for it.  ;o)  The evening was spent eating her yummy vegetable lasagna, watching her open gifts, and eating her yummy custom cake that Jacob and Olivia’s art teacher at school made for her.  Oh my goodness, it was good!

After dinner we all went home and crashed because we were all positively exhausted.  After the kids went to bed, B and I watched the Georgia vs. Notre Dame game in bed so we could see it with the commentary.  It was just so crazy we wanted to relive it, this time from a different perspective!

And that was our weekend!  It was exhausting and wonderful and we couldn’t have asked for a better one! 

Happy Tuesday, y’all!