March is for Madness

Once upon a time, there was a girl. A suburban, musical-loving, never-played-a-sport-in-her-life girl. Who was head-over-heels in "like" with a boy named Wade. A fresh-off-the-farm, I-have-played-every-sport-imaginable boy who, one fateful evening, invited her out. To a basketball game. "Of course!", she said. "I LOVE basketball games!", she said. And so she went, quietly watching him for cues on when to cheer, when to sit in silence, and when to yell loudly at the refs. He bought it, married her, and they lived happily ever after.

Flash forward 5 years...

Wade: "Sweets, come in here. We're not going to bed until you finish your bracket."
Me (looking at the clock, bewildered that it's already 9 and we haven't washed a single baby bottle): "No wait! I haven't even researched any teams yet! And it's 9 o'clock! This will take forever!"
Wade: "Nobody researches teams. Just do it."
Me: "Fine."

10 minutes later...

Me: "I put 'Villie' instead of Villanova for short, b/c that's their nickname. Haha!"
Wade: "Ok fine, can you just finish that side?"

5 minutes later...

Wade: "Quit looking at mine, that's cheating!"
Me: "This is hard, I want to skip these."
Wade: (sigh) "You can't skip them! You have to finish!"

3 minutes later...

Me: "Wait...they're not called 'Villie', they're called 'Nova' for short! Argh dang it!"
Wade: "I finished."

2 minutes later...

Me: "Instead of putting Notre Dame, I put..."(swinging my bracket around to show Wade)
Wade: "...Rudy. (Sigh)"

He loves me.

In fact, he loves me so much (if you're even still reading this, sweet friends!), that he bought me this as an early birthday present. Actually, before I post the picture, it deserves a back story.
I grew up just outside of Ft. Worth (hooray Cowtown!), and some of my absolute favorite memories are of my family's trips to the Rangers games. I am not a baseball expert by any means, but I loved the experience you get going to ball games as a kid. We went for bat night, t-shirt night, ice-cream-in-a-small-plastic-helmet night, and my all time favorite: Dollar Hot Dog Night. It deserves all caps. Even at a young age I knew anything for a dollar is WAY better than paying full price, especially when it comes to hot dogs. In fact, when I was pregnant, I specifically craved the hot dogs from the Ballpark in Arlington. Specifically from, you guessed it, Dollar Hot Dog Night.

But now, I live outside of Austin, 3 hours away from the Rangers. The closest thing we have is the Round Rock Express and a subdivision named after Nolan Ryan (I tried to convince the husband we should live there when we were house hunting, he didn't go for it). So no more hot dogs on warm summer nights watching the Rangers.
Until this came home with Wade today...

Two tickets to the Round Rock Express game! And not just any game...they are playing the RANGERS in some kind of pre-season show down! I was totally surprised! Sweets did such a good job!!!

If it's dollar hot dog night, I might just hyperventilate.