Ready to rumble?

The football season has officially kicked off for the Austins. On Saturday we attended a scrimmage between our beloved Minnesota Vikings and the Kansas City Chiefs, who train at University of Wisconsin-River Falls.

Since Saturday also marked the end of Carter's Up North vacation, my twin sister Raylene met us somewhat on the way and delivered our baby to us. It felt so good to be huggin' my boy again!

From there, the Viking-mobile (aka Windstar) headed to River Falls. There were 5 of us, Jim, Clay, Carter and I plus Jim's nephew Colin. He's a Packer fan but we let him come anyway. It rained off and on the trip down to RF so we weren't too optimistic about the weather situation. I was looking at the radar on my Blackberry and I assured everyone it SHOULD be done by 6:30 when the scrimmage starts. (Hey, I need to be just as accurate as the next weatherman.)

After getting our tickets when the box office opened, we went downtown to eat. My brother Ron and his son David met us there. We ate and headed to the stadium with a whole lotta time to spare. Unfortunately, that meant sitting out in the drizzle until the scrimmage started.

The weird thing is that all week leading up to this, our AC was cranked because we were suffering in the heat! We expected it to be around 75 degrees, maybe mid-60s that evening. Darn weatherman! By the time football started, Carter and I were huddling together for warmth. His legs were freezing (he was wearing shorts) and my toes were just about Viking purple (I was wearing sandals).

The rain stopped, but the wind (even though it was at our backs) was wicked. I was so cold I'm embarrassed to say I don't know how a whole lot of the plays went. I did take a lot of pictures, or tried to, anyway.

At about the 8 o'clock mark, there was a bit of a skirmish on the field and practice ended an hour early. What a rip-off! Though secretly I was thrilled to get back into the van and crank the heat on my toes, I felt we were slighted out of an hour's entertainment.

I told Jim I didn't think the trip was really worth it when you consider we paid for gas, food, tickets and parking -- and the weather was miserable and the scrimmage was cut short. He tended to agree.

We did get one good thing out of it. We've got our Mohawked boy back home. And it was sure good to tuck him last night instead of the cat!