The Portland Lumberjax

On Wednesday, January 7, I'd had a bit of a long, rough day. I was on my way to pick up John from work and was listening to the radio, 105.1 The Buzz for you in the Portland area. The female afternoon DJ is married to the assistant coach/goalie for the Portland Lumberjax, the professional Lacrosse team. He had stopped by and brought in some tickets for them to give out on the radio. They said, we have some tickets, so call in and see if you can snag some. John and I had been discussing going to a Lumberjax game for a while, but our finances aren't awesome, so it was looking like it was going to happen. But when I heard that, I grabbed my phone and dialed in. I tried probably 10-15 times to get through with no luck. I was pulling into a parking spot at John's workplace when I thought I'd give it one last call. And I got through! I snagged two tickets for the Friday night game! I was so excited and could barely wait to tell John when he got in the car. We worked out babysitting and planned to pick the tickets up at the radio station on Friday afternoon.

Friday afternoon came around and we worked our way downtown with mapquest directions. We drove for an hour and half...around and around and around. I was nearly in tears from being so frustrated, not to mention very hungry as I hadn't gotten my lunch yet. I told John to forget it and to just go home. We made our way back home and John decided that he would call out of work (he'd been planning to do a short half-day since he had class that morning) and we'd get better directions from the radio station website.

After a quick bite to eat, we loaded the kids up in the car yet again and made our way to the station. With the better directions, we found it in no time. Which was fine, but also annoying, because if they'd just told us that they were directly next to the Old Spaghetti Factory on the waterfront, I would have known exactly where to go the first time.

So after all that, we took the kids to a park, got some McD's for dinner and then took the boys to grandpa for babysitting. We made our way to the Rose Garden with no problem and found parking right away. I had no idea where the seats were going to be, but figured they would be somewhere in the middle. They are the ones they give away for free after all. We found the entrance to our section and showed our tickets to the usher. We were then ushered down some stairs and down some more....until he stopped us at the 5th row up from the floor!!! We were right next to one of the goals and sitting directly next to the place where all the players and the dancers enter the field. We could see everything perfectly and could feel the vibration when a player slammed into the glass. It was amazing. I was going to take a picture with my phone, but it turned out that it had gotten left in the car after Nathan was playing with it.

We watched the game (amazing!!) while we snacked on Super Nachos (yummy fake cheese...). The time came when they shot t-shirts out into the crowd. We ended up having a t-shirt thrown directly to us! Who knew it could get any better? But it could! I unrolled the Lumberjax shirt to find that the name and player number on the back was none other than the husband of the female DJ from the radio station! I couldn't have been happier! And the shirt fits me perfectly, by the way.

It was such a fun night out and one that I am so happy we were able to receive. With our finances as they are, we had planned to not have any dates for a while and that was beginning to really depress me. I nearly cried when I realized that we had gotten some of the best seats in the house for free. I think I may pay attention to the radio giveaways a little more often to see how far my luck can go!