SEC Championship Part I

As you must know, the SEC Championship was this past weekend. Ashley and I went to the game. The following posts document our little mini-vacation. We left early Friday morning. The drive from Dayton to Atlanta is 500 miles, all on I-75. We were worried it would take us a long time since Bode is now wearing underwear, and we planned on stopping at most of the rest stops to ensure Bode didn't have any accidents. The little man did great. We stopped every couple hours, and had a relatively relaxing drive. Here's a shot of the pilot and copilot being silly.

Bode entertained himself on the trip, and also took a couple naps. He was probably exhausted because we got him up at 0500.

We arrived at Kathy and Dave's house at 3:30. Total trip time was 9 hours, 45 minutes, which wasn't too bad considering we stopped for lunch and had a number of pit stops along the way. Kathy and Dave have two sons, Westin and Keller. Westin is a couple months older than Bode, while Keller just turned one. Bode was sooooo excited to see Westin. The two immediately started pulling out toys in the living room.

Here's a shot of the two little men sitting at their little table, discussing current events.

That evening, we ordered pizza and hung around the house. At this point, I must say a few words about Kathy and Dave. About fifteen months ago, Kathy and Dave found out they were pregnant with little Keller. They also found out Kathy had stage three breast cancer, which had a survival rate a little better than the flip of a coin. Kathy went through the mastectomy and chemo-therapy, had a c-section with Keller six-weeks early, more chemo and radiation, followed by a second mastectomy. Amazingly, they were extremely positive and upbeat during the time. Kathy is now cancer-free and is getting back to normal energy levels. While they don't believe they've done anything more than what other families with cancer have done, I consider them an inspiration about how to handle adversity.

Saturday morning, we woke up with butterflies in our stomachs. Ashley was a bit nervous.

Fortunately, Kathy's work (Georgia Power) was having a pancake breakfast with Santa. Do you think Westin and Bode were anxious to go?

Santa and Mrs. Claus were there, and we got some good shots of Bode on the big guy's lap.

Westin enjoyed visiting with Santa...Keller did not. The picture is a little blurry because Bode took it (yes, really-he's a little Ansel).

Bode and I took a quick picture in the Claus's chairs.

We had a great time at the breakfast, and left shortly before noon. We went home, and got geared up for the big game. Bode stayed with home and played with Westin (Kathy and Dave were so nice to baby-sit). More on the game in the next post...