The Martins Visit the Texas Rangers

We decided to take a quick trip to Dallas during the Labor Day weekend to catch a Rangers game.  We've also decided that as a family we want to visit all 30 major league parks, so this is the first one for the entire family to visit.  To say that our trip was eventful would be a little bit of an understatement.  We left Little Rock on Saturday morning and checked in to our hotel, which as our luck would have it was hosting an S&M conference.  Before you scroll down looking for those pictures - there aren't any.  However, we do have a few from the game.

Here's our family picture at the game.  We had great seats, the sky was cloudy, and there was a great breeze for most of the game.  Simply put, you couldn't ask for a better night at the park.

Our better luck is that it was Star Wars night at the ballpark.  In the first picture you can see a bobble head which was given to the first 1500 or so folks to enter the park.  The one immediately above is Ross clowning with... well, I don't know.  I quit watching Star Wars after the Jedi fought back many years ago.  But Ross knows who it is and this guy was kind enough to pose.  Noticeably absent was Avery, who was desperately clinging to my leg as I took this picture begging me not to get any closer.  The fact this picture exists at all is a sheer testament to Apple products and my balance.

As we checked out the ballpark we cruised to the center field area and found the Nolan Ryan statue.  Of course the kids had no idea who he is, so I had to (wanted to) show them the video of Nolan popping Robin Ventura in the face repeatedly although he was about 20 years older.  It was awesome, and still is.  That's not the point.  The point is we found the statue of the coolest Ranger ever and the kids held still just long enough to get a picture of the strikeout and no-hitter king.

The girls went for a round while running some errand and found the upper deck.  Avery was quite stoked about this, which would have been nice to know before I bought the more expensive tickets.  Needless to say she loved the view and surprisingly did really well at the game.  She has deemed it a success and still wants to go see other parks.

Seriously I was very proud of the kids; they did really well at the game.  Probably the highlight of the night came in the top of the ninth with the Angels down by two.  When they got a runner on first I casually mentioned to Scarlett how funny it would be to see the Angels hit a homerun and the game go into extra innings.  The words had barely left my mouth when a laser shot scraped the top of the left field fence and the game was tied.  We left with the score tied, and heard the game end in the car in the 10th inning (Angels win).  A fun time was had by all and I can't wait for the other 29 parks!