Take me out to the ballgame

Last week, thanks to my generous employer, I won 4 tickets to Saturday's Twins game! I thought it would be really fun for me and Aaron to take the girls to their first baseball game - it was a noon game, so the timing was right, and it was free, so if they got bored or antsy we could just leave without having wasted money on tickets. I was really looking forward to it!

Maisie, however, had different ideas. "Baseball is boring," she said, and refused to go. So I invited Auntie Laura and Dylan to join me and Ella at the game instead!

The four of us took the train to Target Field. It's super convenient - it's the last stop and lets you off right outside the gate. Between the train ride and getting to snuggle up with Dylan, Ella was having a blast already!

We arrived at the ballpark at 11:50 to an announcement of a rain delay. It wasn't raining too hard, so we decided to wander around a little while we waited it out. Laura, Dylan, and I ate turkey sandwiches, and then we went to a store to shop for Twins gear... Dylan needed a cool hat like Ella's, and they both decided they needed giant foam fingers.

There was music on the PA, and the cameras were showing people dancing in the stands. Dylan decided that he had to get on TV. So he and Laura headed down into the stands to dance and try and get the cameras' attention.

Mission accomplished! The giant fingers worked, or something. Just a moment after I took this picture I went down to ask Ella not to sit on the stairs. Then the cameras caught all of us! I immediately started dancing like a fool (because hello, camera!) and we all waved. It was awesome.

After that, Laura and Dylan went to go try their luck to get on camera again in a different part of the stadium. While they did that, Ella and I had a corn dog...

And got her face painted.

We'd just picked up some cotton candy when we found Laura & Dylan again, so we all headed up to our seats. We were actually sitting under a big awning, so they were dry! So we decided to wait out the rain delay from the comfort of section 325, row 11.

This section is called "skyline view" - rather lovely, as you can see, even on a gray, rainy day. And for being so high up, we actually had a pretty good view of the field.

Target Field is pretty remarkable in that respect. I've had good seats and less-good seats there, but never an obstructed view or even a difficult sight line. It's really well built, especially when compared to the awfulness that it baseball at the Metrodome.

So finally, after a two and a half-hour delay... it was baseball time!

After all that time, the game itself was pretty anti-climactic. The first three innings were scoreless, and went fast. The big excitement was dancing to the music they played for the different batters.

They really liked dancing to the music.

We ended up staying through the end of the 4th inning. It was cold and damp, the Twins were down 2 runs, and we'd been there for over four hours at that point. We were all ready to head on home.

But despite the delays and the disappointing performance, it was a fun fun day with Laura and Dylan. We'll definitely do it again... and hopefully this time it'll be sunny.