Wow - Go Cougars! - with pictures finally!

What an amazing time!! I had so much fun tonight. Thanks Merf for telling me about it and thanks Lisa B for going with me. We had a blast. We felt like we were 12 or 13 years old again! It was so fun to meet the coaches and the 12 or 13 players that were there and to get all their signatures. AWESOME, AWESOME! And then to go out on the field and run through drills, with the coaches and players, it was just COOL! I'm telling you, if you live anywhere around here or can arrange to be here ... it is way fun. I hope that all of you will come next year. To my friends with back injuries right now - you could have done pretty much everything tonight and you would have loved it. I saw women that were obviously pregnant doing it - and we're talking 7 months probably. There was also a lady that is 88 years old out there with us. The drills were optional, and you could take it very easy if you needed/wanted ... but you could also go at those pads and slam hard if you wanted. Honestly, I've been telling Steve all the fun details for the last 45 minutes!

It was held in the Cougar Club rooms. They fed us subs, brownies and lots of drinks, let us tour the loges/coach and press boxes, and the locker room. The players were our tour guides. They gave us a t-shirt, a poster, a media guide, a magnet and a great guide to football. The media guides were actually delivered from the printers this afternoon and they were told to not open them too much for awhile to allow the glue to finish drying. We were the very first to get them. Bronco Mendenhall (head coach) talked for a bit and then did Q&A. Then he had all the players that were there (about 13 of them) introduce themselves, their position, home town and their number. And we did a Q&A with them. Then it was to the stadium seats where they talked about tradition and history of the team a bit and then we hit the field. We did 6 drills and we had about 8-10 minutes at each drill. It was just so fun! I've got lots of pictures so I'll post them tomorrow. I'm telling you ... a BLAST!

Thanks again Lisa for going with me, Merf for telling me about it and Steve for cancelling band rehearsal so he could take care of our kids and I could go! Way cool! --- reading back over this, I even sound like myself as a teenager .. cool, a blast, awesome ... guess I should add TOTALLY RAD DUDE! : )

Oh one more little story. I saw a lady tonight with an Elon University shirt on. For those of you who don't know, I lived in the town called Elon College when I was in high school in NC - a small town that was named after the college in town. Later (after I went to college), the college decided to change their name to University. As a result, the city thought it was kind of dumb to be named Elon College when the college was changing its name to Elon University. Anyway, the city is now Elon and the college is Elon University. So back to the story, this little old lady had on an Elon shirt. I was shocked - nobody out here has heard of Elon. So mid-way through the night I asked her about it. She's not from that area, but her first name is Elon. She was celebrating her 88th birthday today. After the night was over and we were getting ready to leave, her daughter approached me and asked if I would take a picture. The lady told me that since she met me she had been kicking herself for not taking a picture and hoped she could find me again. She was a crazy little lady - went sky diving for her 86th bday, and has done rock climbing, bungee jumping, helicopter rides, balloon rides, river rafting .... she named off about 10 things that I've never done and probably won't do. She's traveled the world and just truly lived life. She has a "hall of fame" wall in her house. She told me she is going to add the picture of me and her to her hall of fame wall. She wants to always remember when she met someone from Elon. :) Such a sweet, cute lady! It made my night that much more fun.