I got a random text message from Dad asking me if Mom and I wanted to go to the Seahawks game against the Miami Dolphins at the end of September. I said sure. He said Randy had some tickets that he wasn't going to use and offered them to him to give to us. Dad thought it would be cool if we could go see the Miami Dolphins because I was a huge fan of Dan Marino as a kid. Randy sent them to Mom, and she sent them to me to my email. I looked at the date of them and it was Dad's birthday. Before I accepted them, I asked Dad if he meant to do it on that date. He said yes. It said, it's your birthday, are you sure? He said yes, because he planned on going to his high school reunion in Eugene that weekend.
I accepted them and put them into my Google wallet. I put the date on my calendar so we wouldn't double book ourselves. The night before we were at Nicole and Del's wedding, so I knew I was going to be tired from staying up late. Of course, Dad drive Mom's Expedition, so I had to get up extra early to go pick up Mom in Rainier and drive her into O'Blarney's.
I got up around 8ish and got ready to go. I made sure I had everything I needed for the game and left my house by 8:30 to go get Mom. I was still tired from going to bed late the night before. I ate some yogurt and part of a blueberry bagel as I drive into Rainier. When I got to their house, I was glad Mom was ready to go with her clear bag in tote. We got to O'Blarney's about a half hour early and sat in the Escape for about 15 minutes before getting out and finding what bus we needed to be on. The lady asked us whose tickets we had, we told her Randy, and she told us bus #2. We found our seats and got comfortable.
The emcee of bus #2 got up and told us about the party bus for those who were new and told us that we would be starting the games soon. I ate my chewy bar (since the yogurt and bagel were not enough) while Mom and I talked about some stuff on the way up I-5. We participated in a raffle, we both lost, we bought and filled in our squares for the grid game and got into Seattle within about an hour and half. There weren't any slowdowns because of traffic. It was so nice!
We found out they moved the bus parking to the north end lot. Mom and I got off the bus and walked to the field house. We went through security quickly while they scanned our game tickets. We went inside and walked around. Every time I come to a game and go inside of the field house it's situated differently. We circled the place three times looking for the face painting and finally found it tucked in one of the corners. We stood in line for about a half hour to get our faces painted. We gave them a tip and decided to go into the stadium to try and look for food.
The concourses were so busy Mom just said to go to our seats, and we would get food sometime later on. I misread the section number our seats were in and some guy in a Dolphin's jersey gave me a hard time until I told him I was a huge Dan Marino fan. His behavior towards me changed instantly. We did find our correct seat and sat down. The game started within those 20 minutes. We sat next to a lady and her son. They came to watch Tua play but Tua wasn't playing because of all his concussions. He's had two in the last three years.
The Dolphin's first half was pretty much the entire game. Miami struggled on offense with their backup quarterback Skylar Thompson and then when he went down with a chest injury, they threw in the third string, Tim Boyle. All they could manage was a field goal, very little movement on offense and multiple punts. The Dolphin fans were hopeless.
Our first quarter saw a field goal, two touchdowns, one by Zach Charbonnet and one DK Metcalf and the rest of the first half was boring. Nothing happened except a bunch of penalties that took us backwards instead of forwards. Each drive we had were 5 plays and under. We were either explosive and made the big plays that resulted in some scoring, or we did nothing with it.
We went into halftime up 17-3. From the way this game began I wasn't sure if we would get any touchdowns. I got up with eight minutes left in the second quarter before the half to get Mom and I some food. We ran out of time to do it before the game, and we were getting hungry. I asked her what she wanted, and she said to surprise her. I walked clear over to the other side of the stadium to find an Ivar's. I got two fish and chips, a soda and a water. I was in line longer than it took me to get there and back to our seats with the food. I had a couple of close calls with people bumping into me out on the concourse. I got back with two minutes before halftime ended...when the food and beverage lines got worse. We ate our food while watching the halftime entertainment - a Brazilian drum line with dancers.
The third quarter was full of punts on both sides, penalties that caused both teams to go backwards and the Dolphins went on a 4th and 3 and fell short moving the ball. The score still stood at 17-3. Miami fans started to leave knowing a comeback was not in the cards.
We went into the fourth quarter with some excitement. We were able to put up 98 yards with 11 plays and another touchdown by Charbonnet with our first possession of that quarter. That was the extent of the 4th quarter and the rest of the game. We beat Miami 24-3 and extended our winning streak to 3-0, 2-0 at home. Even though we won the game as a whole was played terribly by both teams. There were some interceptions, bad choices, over a dozen accepted penalties with several more declined or offsetting. It was going to be a long season if we couldn't figure out how to be more efficient on offense and stop the lazy, drive-killing penalties.
We stayed until the end of the game and then slowly made our way back to the bus in the north end parking lot. We didn't leave until after 5. We started watching Sunday Night Football on my phone. It was the Chiefs at the Falcons. Once we got going and heading south towards Lacey, our emcee, started going over the games. Mom and I both lost the grid game but by not much. We needed the Dolphins and Seahawks to score more. The other game we put money into we also didn't win. Oh well. You can't win them all. We watched SNF the entire bus ride back to Lacey. There were a couple times we had to stop along I-5 because of traffic. We arrived back to O'Blarney's around 6:30.
Mom and I stopped at the Safeway on College to pick up a few things. We bought Dad a cupcake for his birthday. I got Mom home and while I was there, Dad pulled up with Mom's Expedition. He made pretty good time coming home from Eugene. We had a mini birthday party for him before I left to come home.
I got home around 7:30, grabbed the mail, unloaded the Escape, went inside, fed the cats, watched the rest of the SNF game, the Chiefs should have lost that game, but somehow, they didn't, talked to Mom and Ben for a little bit since he was on a 12 hour shift at the fire station, ate some salad and got ready for the work week. Weekends go by way too fast.
Next Adventure: Soccer at the RAC, Megan's Divorce Party and Dad's Birthday Party
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