Rise and Shout

 A couple of months ago, I got a text from my brother asking if we wanted to join him in Atlanta in October to see BYU play Georgia Tech.  When he added that my parents were thinking of flying out as well, a mini family reunion was born. 

We took off early Saturday morning for Atlanta, leaving a very sleepy Natalie at home in her bed.  She had had her own football game to attend on Friday night and another band competition to go to on Saturday.  We were a little concerned about leaving her to fend for herself at home but, except for the fact that she left her band pants at home in the dryer when she got picked up to go to her competition, she did fine.  Thankfully, the band has extra pants for just those kinds of emergencies. 

We pulled into downtown Atlanta just before lunch, handed our car off to a valet to be parked in an undisclosed location, there was no self-parking and we still don't know where all the cars were secreted off to, and met up with the rest of the Fife clan for a walk to a Brazilian restaurant to stuff ourselves before the game.

 We especially enjoyed seeing how big our little cousin Charlie had gotten since we saw him in the summer.  And Bryce enjoyed getting a ride in Charlie's stroller thanks to the kindness of Aunt Cami.  

The game itself was about as good as it gets.  The weather was just the right autumn combination of afternoon sunshine and evening chill, and our team gave us reasons to cheer throughout the whole game.  One of Emily's friends claims to have seen us cheering on TV so we recorded the rebroadcast of the game, but haven't taken the time to watch it yet and see if we can find ourselves in the crowd.

Not being for the home team, we were a little afraid we would be sitting in the middle of enemy territory, but our seats turned out to be located right in the heart of the BYU fan section.  We did have a couple of poor Georgia Tech fans sitting behind us whose young son drove Emily crazy with his comments but, by the start of the 4th quarter, they had taken off, along with many of the other Tech fans who didn't have the heart to stay to the bitter end.  Even the student section was looking pretty sparse by the end of the game. 

In all honesty, when the weather started getting a bit chilly, I think both Brandon and Bryce would have been more than happy to join the Georgia fans and head home, but they didn't complain and each found his own way to try to keep warm. Bryce used Uncle Tim as a blanket, and Brandon huddled in his own lap for the last hour of the game. 

After the game, we ordered pizza in the hotel room, watched Charlie crawl around, and just enjoyed being together.  We missed having Natalie with us, but we were glad to have been able to have such a fun day with family.