30 Days Of Thanks - Denver Trip

Dear Carter,

I'm going to try to do the 30 Days Of Thanks challenge during the month of November. Of course there are so SO many things that I am thankful for, so these are in no particular order.

Today, I am most thankful for your Daddy and the trip he took me on this weekend. I am not lying when I say that many MANY of my dreams came true on this trip, and a lot of them were completely unplanned. I truly think that God was looking out for us on this trip!

As most people know, your Daddy and I are huge HUGE football fans. Your Daddy is a Denver Broncos fan, and I am a Detroit Lions fan. The thing about our two teams is that they only play each other every four years, so we don't encounter too many problems with our rivalry. They only play in Denver once every eight years, and we had planned to take a trip to see them play each other eight years ago, but as luck would have it your brother was due about two weeks before the game. Our next plan was to go to Detroit for the game four years ago, but it ended up falling right as we were building our house. When the schedule came out this year, we knew that this was our chance and made plans for our trip. It has been a long LONG time coming, and was worth every moment. Your brother and sister got well taken care of by your Grandmas and Aunt Stacy.

We flew out on Friday night, and met Mommy's friend, Jenny, for dinner and a night on the town.

It was excellent to hang out with her, and it reminded me of just how much we miss her. Thank you so much to Jenny for showing us around....we had a blast!!

The next day we took a trip to the stadium to check it out. We really are geeks when it comes to football, so it was fun to walk around while it wasn't busy. Here is a view from the stadium.

Your Daddy liked seeing his Bronco fountain!We spent the rest of the day shopping, and just enjoying the city. It was good to have a mini-vacation where at least on one day we had no plans, and could just relax.

The next morning was game day, so we got up early and went to breakfast. Now here is when things got a little exciting. I have to preface this by saying that we booked this hotel using Hotwire. It's a website where you purchase a room, but you don't know exactly where you will be staying until after you've paid. You only know the type of hotel your reservation will be comparable to. We found out we would be staying at The Westin which we were nervous about since the reviews online weren't that great. We were pleasantly surprised to find out this was quite a nice hotel and fancy in comparison to our past hotels.

After breakfast, we were walking through the street mall and came upon a booth where the Denver Bronco Cheerleaders were signing posters. We had them sign one for Team Carter, and decided that it would be best to take it up to the room before we went on to the stadium. As we were walking up to our hotel, we saw that there were a few busses parked in the front, and when we went in there were about 10-15 Lions fans waiting in the lobby. Of course we thought to ourselves..."could it be? Is the team here??". Daddy ran up to the room, and I waited in the lobby when sure enough down the escalator comes a few of the players. I surely thought my heart would beat out of my chest. I know that these are just people, but I cheer on these people every single week. I have to admit that I got starstruck. When your Daddy came back down, we were passed by Linebacker, Bobby Carpenter. Then a few seconds later, Coach Jim Schwartz started coming down the escalator with a few other players. I was within inches of all of these guys, and it was AWESOME! Daddy yelled out "Mr. Schwartz", and he waved back at him (even though he was wearing a Broncos jersey ha!). THEN a few minutes later, our Quarterback Matthew Stafford came down the escalator. The pictures we got our horrible because we had the settings messed up and everything happened so fast, but Matt is the guy in the gray sweatshirt. More and more came down...some I could recognize, and some I couldn't. This is a picture of me next to the escalator. One of my favorite players ever, our kicker, Jason Hanson is the guy in the gray suit on the left. There are a bunch of linemen behind him.The guy carrying the box is our Defensive Tackle Ndamukung Suh. Be still my heart!!We saw some cornerbacks and other wide receivers. The only player that I did not see who would have been hard to miss is Calvin Johnson (he's six foot five!). I think he must have came out before we were there. To think that I slept in the same building as my whole team is CRAZY to me, and that I was within inches of most of them is even better! We even got to meet Detroit's Hall Of Fame fan, The Crackman. He gave us a signed card too!I think about all of the things that had to come into play for this to happen, and can only be thankful to God for making it all happen. It was complete chance that we got that hotel...complete chance that we came upon the Denver Cheerleaders which caused us to go back to the hotel. We would have never have even known!

Once we got to the stadium we watched a couple of the Denver Broncos walk in. The only one we recognized was Brady Quinn. Then we took a few photo opps before the gates opened.Your Daddy even took a moment to "Tebow" in front of the Broncos.Once the gates were opened, we got to watch the players warm up. We were on row nine, so we had a close view!

At the beginning of the game, they released a TON of balloons. All we could think about is how much fun you would have with them up there in Heaven. We love you my little sweetie!

The game ended with my Lions really laying it on The Broncos, but your Daddy was a good sport about it. We really had the best time, and the best part was knowing that even after everything that has happened in the last couple of years, we can still have good things happen to us....for this we are thankful.