Day 2! The Auburn - UMass football game!
Look. I'm a planner. I don't like surprises. I don't like crap ruining my day/weekend/event. So I pre-purchased parking out on Lem Morrison where we parked in the morning and walked on to campus to check out the Quad and my FIRST ever dorm at Auburn! Never did I ever think I would bring my teenagers back here.
Sadly, we also walked by the other dorm I lived in (Knapp Hall) and almost every building on the Hill had already been torn down to make room for more College of Education buildings. I mean sure, if you have a huge housing issue, you should definitely take down all of this housing! (Eye roll!)
We walked around campus among the big white tents for a bit before heading over to the Bud Light tailgate at Plainsman Park. You can see Grant is super thrilled to be here. His complaint is that the guy behind him was playing country music, and he hates country music. (Go ahead and laugh, cause I did!)
We played a little cornhole but these boards were super slippery! So I gave up and let Todd play Natalie.
Natalie took a couple of great shots of Todd mid-throw!
This tailgate had big screens up for everyone to watch the earlier games - this one was Deion Sanders first game as head coach at Colorado, and Colorado beat TCU (who played Georgia in the National Championship last year.)
If you're in Auburn for a football game, you cannot miss Tiger Walk!
Natalie was super excited to see QB Robby Ashford, but I really wanted to see Aubie! Natalie found her friend Haley from 6th grade at Netzaberg Middle School (yes, in Germany!) and went off to watch Tiger Walk with her.
This was Coach Freeze's first game at Auburn and therefore his first Tiger Walk. I swear he couldn't stop talking about how cool it was after the game!
Nat: I saw this guy surrounded by people, do you know who he is?
Me: UM YES. That's Dylan Cardwell, senior starter on the basketball team!
Nat might have been stalking him (I kid!)
She was DEFINITELY stalking Robby Ashford though! Players will give high fives to the fans lining the street and sometimes will stop to sign autographs for kids.
This was just the funniest thing to me, Natalie meeting up in Auburn with Haley, her friend from Germany!
And as we were saying goodbye to Haley, all of the sudden, I heard, "Colleen Swales?" And standing right next to me was my sorority sister, Jennifer! There were literally tens of thousands of people on campus and we just randomly ran into each other!
I also got to see my sweet sorority sister Jennie! I was joking with her that she literally saved my kids lives. Jennie had MOE'S burritos at her tailgate and I thought my kids my cry because they absolutely love Moe's and they were starving. Jennie has the cutest family - THREE BOYS (ok, two of them are grown men who go to Auburn, but still!) It was kind of my dream to have a gaggle of boys!
I'm sad that we couldn't spend more time hanging out at Jennie's super cool tailgate, but we had to get inside the stadium so we did not miss our eagle, Independence fly before the game.
It was a beautiful day for an Auburn football game! We got SUPER lucky with a little bit of cloud cover and some slightly cooler temperatures. I mean, it was still in the mid 80s, but at least it wasn't in the upper 90s as it had been the weekend before this.
The pre-game festivities are always so much fun. Natalie said she especially liked the hype videos up on the big screen.
Indy got to hang out on the field after retrieving his post flight snack.
At halftime when it was 31-7 Auburn over UMass, they interviewed former running back Ronnie Brown right in front of us!
At some point I realized I just didn't have any pictures of the actual game! I took a bunch of video, but not a ton of pictures. But here, Connor Lew was actually in at center!
The seats at Jordan Hare are small, to put it nicely. And because we were in the corner, we had to turn our heads to the right for the entire game. This bothered Todd's already bad neck, so he went up to the spiral walkway to watch some of the third quarter up there. I can see him - he's in an orange shirt, on the lower of the two levels, off to the right just a bit. (He's also tall, so I can find him that way!)
He saw us, too!
There's always a great view from those walkways!
We finally got to see Auburn score in front of us. I feel like they mostly scored on the other end of the field!
Naturally, Auburn put a beatdown on UMass and won 59-14, so we immediately went to Toomer's to roll some trees!
Things are getting messy! I love it! We were walking by someone who asked out loud, "Who cleans all of this up?" University employees swiftly clean up the next morning by spraying everything with water and cleaning up the mushy mess!
I told my kids to be patient, and eventually a roll of toilet paper would land in their hands somehow. Little kids always crowd the trees and steal the TP as soon as it lands on the ground!
Nicely done, guys!
We did it! We rolled Toomer's!
After we rolled Toomer's, we went to Auburn Draft House for some dinner. While we were waiting for a table, we met up with my friend Jason and his two daughters, Reese and Wynn! We chatted for a bit when they called our name to be seated. Only after he left did I realize that we didn't get a picture of us together! Boo. We also had a crazy end to our dinner when some guy from UMass got in the face of the hostess and made her cry! NOT COOL. Everyone clapped when they kicked him out! (Or maybe he left voluntarily?) One guy got in his face - that's not how we do stuff down south, sir!
After dinner, we had to walk allll the way back to Lem Morrison to get our car, but at least we got to see Toomer's one more time!
But Toomer's Corner looked so pretty in the evening glow! Swoon!
One last parting shot of Jordan Hare Stadium under the lights before we headed back to the hotel.
We didn't fly out until Monday morning, but we spent Sunday night at a hotel near the airport in Atlanta. Before we drove back to ATL, we HAD to stop by Buc-ee's!!!!! Yes, they actually have a Buc-ee's in Auburn! It's hard to tell from this picture but there are 120 fueling stations here! They employ about 200 people, and they pay them a decent wage - $17 an hour. (Minimum wage in Alabama is $7.25 which is just the federal minimum wage.)
The Bailey's are READY for the total Buc-ee's experience!
It only opened a few months ago, but it was everything I dreamed it would be. It smelled deliciously of BBQ, and you can pretty much get almost anything here in this over 53,000 square foot location. I picked up some banana pudding and a t-shirt, HA!
The Buc-ee's beaver was on site for some selfies!
Natalie opted for a normal picture with this guy.
World's Cleanest Bathrooms? CHECK! (Unofficial of course, although apparently one of the Buc'ees locations in Texas actually did win an award for America's cleanest bathroom once!)
Gotta get those beaver nuggets!
Man, I miss banana pudding something fierce! I probably should just learn to make my own, once and for all. Buc'ees banana pudding did NOT disappoint!
On our way out of town, we had to stop by ONE more location from my past. The apartment I shared with Kristin, Allison and Coleen my sophomore year. We lived in the one on the middle on the far left, apartment #7. Our friends Mike and Bryon lived below us, I think. That was the apartment we lived in where we had a party one time and someone poured beer in my Chia Pet. RIP Chia Pet!
We drove up to Atlanta, checked into the hotel and went out for the kids FIRST experience at a Waffle House! Can you believe they have never been to the Awful Waffle?
And we absolutely TORE. IT. UP. So good! I had a bacon, egg and cheese on toast with hash browns that reminded me of a drunken night in... well... Auburn!
Until next time, Atlanta! (And more specifically, Auburn!) What a fantastic weekend!
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