San Jose Giants

I took a trip with my parents when I was in my late teens and on that trip we stopped in New York at the Baseball Hall of Fame.  I remember a great many things from that trip, but perhaps the most clear memory is of sitting across a restaurant from another family - the kids were screaming and crying, the father was yelling at them, and the mother was frantically going through a bag looking for something.  My dad said to me, "That is a family that tried to do too much in one day and got altogether too tired."

With the memory so clearly etched in my memory, you'd think I would have learned from it.  Sadly, I seem not to have.

We set out as we do most Thursdays, to Livermore to visit Grandpa and Grandma.  On these days, the kids don't get a nap because they stay until 3 or so, but usually they sleep for 45 minutes or so in the car.  This time, we planned to stay with the Grandparents until 4:30 and then head down the eastern edge of the Bay Area to get to San Jose and park with time for the 6:00 opening of the ballpark.

At exactly 3, Max asked when we were leaving.  It's creepy how well he can tell time!

We avoided most of the traffic on our way out of town by using the HOV lane and got to San Jose a little earlier than we'd anticipated.  We bought tickets and got in line - the kids were really excited about going to a baseball game, but it was already becoming apparent that they were too tired and it was too hot and this might've been a little more than we could tackle.

The first stop after we got through the gates was the bouncy house.  There are a handful of carnival-like games for kids to play at $1/play, or $5 for 10 tickets, the option we took.  This bought the kids 9 minutes each in the bounce house.  I remind you it was about 90 degrees.

About halfway into their time, the young lady in charge asked if we minded if some bigger kids joined them.  We didn't, so there were six kids in there at one point.  The big kids did a really good job of looking out for the little ones, but at one point Daniel did collide with a boy.  He fell to the "ground" and, in a repeat of one of his more adorable moments, grabbed his face and lamented, "My eyebrow!"  He bounced back up, but Caroline had already been alerted to her brother's pain.  She bounced right up to the bigger boy and said, "You don't hit my brother! That not nice!"  To his credit, the boy apologized again and bounced away.

When their time was up, I had to scramble into the little door to drag them out, which can not have been my best image.  But it was efficient.

We went on to Turkey Mike's BBQ.  Daniel lined up with Joe to get food while I took Max and Caroline to find seats.  And then Caroline went insane.  Any time anything flew off the table in the wind, she screeched at the top of her lungs.  She begged for things and then, when I gave them to her, she screamed that wasn't what she wanted.

When Joe got to the front of the line to order, I grabbed Daniel to sit with us.  When Joe brought the food over, I turned and somehow Daniel was lying on his back on the ground, crying.  Caroline was screaming.  Hot dogs fell on the floor.  Water spilled.  Everyone was just getting hotter.  And we were getting dirty looks for not keeping them quiet during the national anthem.

So I did the only thing I could think of to salvage the situation.

I bought them ice cream.

We carried it, along with all the food we hadn't yet eaten, to the other side of the ballpark to try to sit down in the shade.  We took a wrong turn (hard to imagine, if you know how small San Jose Municipal Stadium is), but it gave the kids a chance to glimpse the field, and Caroline briefly met Gigante, the team's huge orange mascot.  He shook Caroline's hand and kissed her on the head and she could NOT stop talking about it all night.

Then we found a picnic table behind the accessible seating area and dug into our soft serve.

Even better about this spot, we were right by "the monkey's house" - better known as Gigante's locker room.  While I didn't see a second of the game on the field, I did participate actively in the "watching for the mascot to appear" game.  We were also right next to where the participants in between-innings antics lined up to wait.  One of these people was a teenage girl wearing a pink tshirt who was practicing doing cartwheels.  Caroline saw her and made the instant connection that she must be Stephanie from Lazy Town.

When it looked like we weren't going to get another visit from the mascot and everyone's ice cream had melted to soup, we finally decided it was time to head home.  To try to avoid the inevitable whining to return to the bouncy house as we exited, I steered the kids toward the program/scorecard stand, being manned by "The Queen".  Caroline was very impressed and the boys didn't think she was too shabby either.

And just then, Gigante came back around!

We made it out to the car, buckled up, and got out to the freeway relatively quickly and got everyone home and in bed just about on time.  Not bad.

Caroline was so taken by the Queen, in fact, that she insisted on wearing a tiara the next day.  She was sitting in her chair at breakfast and pointing at the china cabinet across from her, saying she needed, I swear, a chihuahua.  After laughing at me a couple of times and saying it more slowly, I finally noticed that there was a toy princess set sitting on top of the cabinet that I'd been given as a gift for my 35th birthday.  I snatched it down and asked her if that's what she wanted and she said, "Yes! Tee-ah-wah!"

As you can see, the tiara comes with earrings, necklace, and a ring (not pictured)