#tbt Our First Banana Ball Game ✨⚾️🍌✨

Today, we're doing a quick Throwback Thursday to Saturday July 25th, when Eliot and I celebrated Christmas in July with our first Banana Ball game!!! ⚾️🍌

About a week and a half ago… Eliot and I drove over to Hadlock Field (aka Delta Dental Park now), a usual route in our summer routine.  However, this time, we weren't going over to cheer on our Portland Sea Dogs with Slugger... instead, we were attending the Loco Beach Coconuts 🌴🥥 vs the Texas Tailgaters. 🤠🐊 

We're blessed that our friends Tabbi and Brad were selected for the lottery in Portland, so we all got to go to our first Banana Ball game at our home ballpark!!! 💖 

Naturally, Eliot decided to make mouse ears last minute and he was literally finishing them right before we left to drive up to Portland.  He wasn't able to finish my pair, but thanks to our new 3D printer, he was able to get one pair completed!  (Aren't they cool?!?!?)  He wore them to the game and he got a ton of compliments on them!

The entire afternoon and evening was quite a party.  Before the game, we drank free samples of tropical smoothies and Dunkin drinks at the outdoor fan fest outside of the stadium.  There was a concert and a parade of the players.  We also shopped for some merchandise.  Eliot and I both got Loco Beach Coconuts t-shirts, and we also got Loco Beach Coconuts & Texas Tailgaters stickers and pins to commemorate the day.  After a bit of deliberating, I also got one of the Loco Beach Coconuts baseball jerseys.

We had so much fun watching the Loco Beach Coconuts 🌴🥥  take on the Texas Tailgaters. 🤠🐊 There was so much going on at the same time, that I barely realized an actual baseball game was also taking place.  (At one point, a foul ball was hit at us, and thank goodness I was paying attention because it was going towards Brad's head!)

The game whizzed right by... and before I knew it, two hours were over and the Loco Beach Coconuts were celebrating their win on the field.  There were so many fun moments.  I think a few of my favorite highlights were the belly flop competition (for Fan Challenge Representative of the game), the pool noodle fight between a 3 & 4 year old, and "moo-sical" chairs with people wearing inflatable cow costumes.  The Hula-gens dance crew were also hilarious.  And every once in a while, water would shoot towards the sky out of water cannons placed at the edge of the ball field around home plate.  

After the game was over, there was another concert right outside of the ballpark.  The players from both the Loco Beach Coconuts & Texas Tailgaters came out to meet fans, take photographs and autograph things well after the game had ended.

Our first Banana Ball game was a great experience and I can see why people love it.  It was a lot of fun and very entertaining... something that sometimes doesn't happen with baseball games.  (I'm not sure I'll ever look at a normal baseball game the same ever again... this might have ruined me.)  The two hour game was perfect- not too short and not too long.  And the music playing the entire time definitely kept my mind engaged.  (I won't lie, the only Sea Dogs game we've been to since this day was depressingly quiet and boring compared to our Banana Ball experience.) 

I can confidently say Eliot and I are definitely big fans of Banana Ball... and thankfully the fun & games aren't over quite yet... 🙂 Because a few weeks from now, we’ll be going down to Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, MA to see our second game with Tabbi, Brad, my brother Jeremy, Eliot's parents (and possibly his sisters) for the Loco Beach Coconuts 🌴🥥 vs the actual Savannah Bananas... and I'm so excited!!! ✨💙💛⚾️🍌