The Big D -- Day 4

Today was all about sports. And what a day it was. We didn't expect much from the American Airlines Center tour. It only cost $4/person for the tour, so how much would/could we really see? Well, Ron, our tour guide was amazing! We spent two hours with him and it was just the four of us. We tons of stuff, including the Stars locker room, which I don't think was supposed to be part of the tour. He even grabbed a couple pucks from the Stars training room and gave them to the boys! That tour of the locker room was worth the price of admission right there. The boys sat on the Stars bench. We got there right after they'd finished painting the Stanley Cup Playoffs graphic on the ice, so that was cool, too. Something we aren't going to see in Washington this spring. :(

The arena is very nice, and quite clean. Lots of cool mosaics on the floors throughout the arena. We saw all of the different levels, and several different restaurants and bars and got the stories on all of them. We even saw a couple of Mavericks practicing on their practice court. We don't really like basketball, but that was kind of cool. Apparently they were leaving this afternoon for wherever they are going for their playoff series.

At the end of the tour, Ron let us into the team store (which was open; he just let us in from a closed gate to the arena). Keeper Boy wanted to buy a jersey. I'm not sure how much (or little) he thought he was going to get said jersey for, but he had a bit of sticker shock when he looked at it. He settled for a t-shirt. However, when he went to pay for it, his debit card was declined. Weird because I knew he had more than enough on his card to cover it. I logged into our bank accounts real quick and saw that his balance was actually a couple dollars lower than the cost of the shirt. That didn't make sense, but more on that later... the cashier then gave him 10% off so that he had enough money to cover it! How nice was that?

As we were leaving, I looked at his account and discovered a fraudulent charge for $49.99. Ugh. That explains the low balance. I'm working on that, but didn't have a very good experience with the bank this afternoon. I'll work on that again tomorrow. Not too worried about additional charges right now since Justin's current balance is about $2. But it looks like his card will need to be cancelled and re-issued. Pain in the butt.

Lunch at Olive Garden and then on to AT&T Stadium.

We did a self-guided tour of the stadium. We started by looking down at the field. They were working on the field, but it was still impressive. The jumbo tron is just as massive as it looks on TV. I mean, it stretches from 20 yard line to 20 yard line. HUGE! The "TV" cost as more on its own than the entire previous Cowboys stadium cost to build. Crazy!

Next, we went down on the field (squishy!). The boys ran around awhile, but we didn't have a football for them to toss. I got my picture in the end zone with the Eagles t-shirt on. ;) From the field, we went to the Cowboys locker room. It was beautiful. Apparently the wood that each player's locker is made from is imported from South Africa. Apparently it would cost $9,000 PER LOCKER to replace. Needless to say, you are not allowed to sit in players' lockers. From there, we went into the media room, where players and coaches meet the press after games. The boys hammed it up on the podium. And then we went into the Cowboys Cheerleaders locker room. Keeper Boy declared that "they are all hot." We talked to a very nice guy (employee) in the locker room, who had a lot of information.

After that, we were pretty much done, so we headed back out to the Team Store (where, of course, the tour starts and ends). Keeper Boy found a PURPLE polo shirt with the Cowboys logo on it that was on sale, so we got that for him. Told J-Mav he could get something, too. He wanted a football of all things. Once we paid for the stuff, we asked if we could go back to the field and were told, "of course!" Woo hoo! So John and the boys tossed the ball around ON THE FIELD for about 10 minutes. Very cool.

When we were leaving, we asked the concierge if they had a listing of where specific pavers were that people purchased when the stadium was being built. Because as we were walking in, I remembered that the boys and I had gotten one for John for Father's Day one year. We were given a phone number to call to get the section number. John called and got the information, and luckily, the section his paver was supposedly in was right outside the door we had gone in. We went out and scoured the section, but it was nowhere to be found. We were disappointed. Hubby said, "maybe they figured because we were in Virginia we'd never come to see it and they didn't really do it." I think he was only half joking. But we checked the section right next to it, and J-Mav found it! We took some pictures and then headed back to the car.

Then it was off to Hubby's cousin's house. We were meeting them there and then going to dinner at a place called Chuy's. We had a great dinner. The four kids got along great both Saturday night and tonight. You'd never know that they had never met each other before this week!

Another great day in Texas... need to figure out what we are going to do tomorrow... nothing on the agenda.