A Wild Night

Sam was on vacation last weekend.  He was golfing with Opa, Uncle Will, and Will's father-in-law, Steve, in Lake Havasu, AZ.  He had a very good time and got home late on Monday night/early Tuesday morning.

When I arrived home from school on Tuesday, Sam had the kids at home and was changing their clothes.  He said, "We're leaving.  Help me get them ready."  Then he spelled out the surprise: we were going to the W-I-L-D G-A-M-E.  We talked Anne into her jersey without giving away our plans and then we hit the road.  Sam said this was his gift to the family for being gone on his trip.

We arrived in St. Paul and started walking toward the Xcel Energy Center.  We had recently been in the area to visit the Children's Museum, and Anne thought we were going there again.  When approaching the X, unless you park out in the open, you come at it from behind.  We got inside the building and all the way to the main entrance before Anne put the pieces together.  "We're at the Xcel Energy Center!  We're going to the Wild game!" she shouted.

Anne showing some pride while we waited at the gate

This is where the fun really started.  We had arrived so early (5:00 for a 6:30 game) that the gates were not yet open.  While hanging out in the entrance area, our attention was drawn to a man with a TV camera.  He was up in a balcony area with a microphone and asked, "Who here has 200-level tickets?" Sam raised his hand and we were invited up to play the "Enterprise Rent-a-Car Hat Trick Challenge"  Sam was informed that he would be given 5 multiple-choice questions.  If he got 3 correct we would win an autographed Cal Clutterbuck hockey stick.  If he got all 5 correct we would win seats in the lower level!  Sam did a great job answering the trivia--all the questions had to do with the Wild and their opponent, the L.A. Kings.  He got all 5 right, so we won the stick and the tickets!

We headed inside and went to find Opa.  (We were able to leave the stick at Guest Services).  He had heard the trivia game on the closed-circuit TV, but he didn't know it was us, so we filled him in.  We got the kids a bite to eat and headed downstairs to watch warm-ups at the glass.

Waiting for their pretzel

It was so cool to see these guys up close.  I was so glad the kids knew the players' faces and numbers, because it made the whole thing that much more exciting.  I myself was a little star-struck, especially when I made momentary eye contact with Kyle Brodziak.  We took some video of the kids watching, but it is so hard to hear what they were saying.  They were mostly in awe and shouting "There's so-and-so!" and banging on the glass.  Watch if you'd like; it is only 30 seconds and you can see how close they were:

 

Anne and Sam get a close-up look at Nate Prosser

 After warm-ups we hustled to our seats to get ready for introductions.  Both kids can quote the PA guy: Ladies and Gentlemen, on your feet!  Here they come; your Minnesota Wild!  They knew what to expect when the lights went out, which made for fun instead of tears.  Sambo was screaming "Woo!" and Anne, for some reason, kept chanting, "USA!  USA!"  We had to remind her that both teams are from the USA :)  The crowd was close to sold-out, but we ended up with extra seats on either side of us, so the kids did not have to sit on laps the whole time.

We watched the first 2 periods in our seats.  The Wild played terribly, so for the 3rd period we headed back up to Opa.  Uncle Travis was also at the game, and we knew he would be up there, too.  With 2 kids in a crowd of 17,000, we had a game plan for intermission: picture with the P-Marc poster, trip to the bathroom, stop by the FSN broadcast desk, then to Opa.  What we missed as we executed this plan was seeing our picture on the huge screen over the ice!  Apparently they like to show-off their contest winners.  No picture of that, but here are the kids with their #1 guy:

 

Anne said, "P-Marc is so tall!"  I didn't have the heart to tell her, "He's wearing skates and his feet are 12 inches off the ground."

Relocating for the third period did not work any magic for the Wild, who lost 4-0 and got booed by the hometown crowd at the end of each period.  We stayed until the bitter end, claimed our stick, and headed home.  I had to smile at all the people admiring our prize as we walked back to our car.  Since our picture had been seen by the majority of the crowd, a few people said, "Hey, it's the hockey stick family"

The kids were totally asleep by the time we got home (it was 10:30, after all!) so Sam snapped a picture of them with the stick on Wednesday morning.  They are laying on the coffee table.

All in all, it was a great night and great memories were made for our family.  Thanks, Sam, for surprising us!