jessi lyn: cass and elizabeth

Thanks to many generous supporters we often get to go to different sporting events in the area. This particular night we had Tigers tickets and I was excited to spend an evening at the ballfield, without children. Well, like most events in my life a few of them manage to sneak in. So, I loaded the Bonnie up with the two interns (who I adore and am not considering them the children :) and two neighbor girls. I thought they had been to a game before but they acted like they had never even seen downtown! We weaved through the streets and found somewhere to park amidst the baseball fans and Aretha Franklin fans that were also attending an event downtown. The girls had the job of remembering the streets we parked at. One remembered Cass and one remembered Elizabeth. They practiced the whole short walk to the ball field. On the way in we saw a homeless asking for money and one of the girls was so sad she had left the three pennies on the floor in the car, she wanted to give him money so badly. This, from a child who most would consider poor. Clearly, she is not poor, but rich in spirit. We can learn so much from children.

Another beautiful thing about taking children on outings with you is seeing them discover things for the first time. We were walking (all the way!) around the stadium and one of the girls stopped in her tracks. I thought from the shoe that had broken about 100 times on the way in. But, after I picked her jaw up off the ground I realized she was marveling at the amount of people. She said, "there are 4 million people here", she had never seen something so large before! After she picked up her jaw, she also found a nickel on the floor. She was so intent on keeping that nickel safe and that we walked back the same way to cass and Elizabeth to give the homeless man her nickel, and she did. What a testimony to us all.

We didn't make it through the whole game, and mostly played with each other more than watched but they got a round of Take Me out to the Ballgame in and that's all that matters in my book. So, after we did the 7th inning stretch we made our way back to the car, gave the nickel to the poor man, and ended with a drive through the McDonald's drive-thru. Successful night indeed.

Here's a few pics, enjoy!

the girls, me, the tiger

the field