Bucket List

Last week I spent a day doing something I have always wanted to do. I spent the day at Packer's training camp. We left Madison as the sun rose. It felt way too early, but our excitement was starting to build. We arrived in Green Bay just as practice was starting. The weather was perfect. Upper 70s and breezy. We walked all around the field and saw all of the special teams doing drills and working plays. Amazing!

And then the time came for the Packers to head back to Lambeau to shower and go over what went well and didn't during the morning practice. The Packers filed off the field and continued the tradition of riding kid's bikes from the practice field back to Lambeau. All of the sudden the players started to file by me. I'm not kidding when I say they were less than three feet from me. I could have reached out and touched them. Why I didn't is still something I'm kicking myself over today! Seriously, Clay Matthews and Jordy Nelson. James Jones. I could have touched their beautiful arms passing me by. Idiot, Ann.

We walked to the stadium and walked up to a tent that was giving out free bike helmets to kids. We got our girls fitted for helmets. They are great and of course advertise our favorite team. But wait. The folks fitting kids wanted the moms to get helmets, too. I said, oh, that's ok. Let's save the free helmets for the kids. No, the fella said, we need our moms to ride bikes with the kids and they need to be safe, too. Score!

Off to lunch at Curly's we went. We were seated right away. And starving. Lo and behold who was walking right in front of us as we alked to our table? Mark Murphy, president and CEO of the Packers. Holy crap. He was gracious and posed to have his picture taken with the girls. My heart was beating even faster than before. Lunch was delicious. It wan't our first Curly's Pub experience. We knew it would be great.

On to the Pro Shop. And shop we did. Love that place. One year I actually did all of my Christmas shopping there. We all found things that we wanted and yes we bought a few. You could spend hours in there. I find it almost more fun watching all of the other people and how they react to all that is green and gold.

And at the end of our day we opted for the stadium tour. For all of the years that we have been season ticket holders. For all of the times I have been to Lambeau. And for all of the games I have attended, I have never taken the stadium tour. Oh, man. We sat in a luxury box. We were educated on more history than we had ever had before about our team. Funny stories were told. And at the end we walked through the tunnel and entered the stadium just as our team does on game day. I literally got the chills. What a truly glorious feeling.

I will always be a Packers fan. I will always go to games. And if I'm not at a game, I'll be watching it on t.v. I will continue to bleed green and gold. And now I will always remember that perfect day in July when I got to know my favorite team even better than before.