Making the Best of Plan B

Attend an NFL Game
I can't believe I haven't crossed this off my list yet! My husband actually hasn't either and I always enjoy when things we want to do or places we want to go seem to line up perfectly.  Growing up, my family and I attended the Florida Gator football games and college football has always been more captivating to me.  I enjoy watching NFL games, but I don't follow it as much as I do college.  When I moved to North Carolina, I decided to start rooting for the home team, which was the Carolina Panthers.  I am still not a great fan and the games don't make or break me but they are who I pull for.  

At the beginning of every football season, we always talk about going to a game but with the fall being so busy, we blink and it's December.  For our 4-Year Anniversary this year, I decided to purchase them for an early weekend in the season.  

We always do the "traditional gifts" for our anniversary.  This year was a tough one, "Fruit and Flowers", but I got creative and was pretty excited to give my gift!

Unfortunately, our babysitter plans fell through and our plans for what was supposed to be a "day date" ended up being a family outing, Plan B.   We still had a great time, we just had to make some minor accommodations for our 16 month son.  We arrived in Charlotte at the start of the game (and smack in the middle of nap time). Fortunately, Holden had slept for a small portion of the 3-hour drive and he was ready to get out of his car seat.  We had the perfect parking spot that backed up to some dirt/sticks/rocks/leaves and we enjoyed tailgating just the two of us as our boy ran off some energy.  

By the time we walked to the game, purchased some pork nachos, and found our seats, it was already halftime (which was fine as we knew he wouldn't make it the whole game).  As you can imagine, most of our focus was on entertaining our child as opposed to actually watching the game.  

He was such a trooper, but there is no way you can possibly take a child to a football game and simultaneously enjoy it, unless they are equally as invested as you are.  In our case, it worked out and as I previously stated, the win or loss wasn't going to make or break our day.  No way I would ever take him to a game that I was invested in, I would rather resort to "Plan C" and not even go.

The game versus the Buffalo Bills wasn't super thrilling ,offensively speaking, as we were only able to see a field goal by each team in the 4th quarter.  The final score was Panthers-9, Bills-3.  I will mention that Luke Kuechly looked even more fabulous in person and it was exciting that we won!  It could have been our "nose bleeds" seats but the volume and intensity of fans and the stadium was less than I expected.  The Swamp is definitely more rowdy than Bank of America stadium (as experienced only by this one game).

Clearly he was so over it haha

I definitely want to go to more games, next time without my kid and maybe even taking off Monday from work.  "Plan B" did have it's perks and I am thankful that we able to experience our first NFL game together as a family. GO PANTHERS!