Royals Fan Fest

Royals Fan Fest. A great way to get the crowds hyped up for the upcoming season. Right? Bring in all the players. Give the masses a chance to get autographs and photos. Give away lots of free stuff. Play a lot of really loud music. What could be better, right? What they didn't explain was that the players come out in groups of three to one of three stages. All at random. No notice. You pick a line and stand in it. For hours. Now, do you think our three young children would appreciate standing in line for a couple of hours to maybe not meet Billy Butler*. Uh, no. Us either. So, here is what we did instead:
Batting practice.Lots of batting practice.The boys really wanted to do real batting. They waited quite a while in this line. I think the man pitching hated children as he really didn't try all that hard to help them. They tried so hard. Noah hit one or two.Benj didn't hit a single pitch. But check out the sile on this kid's face. Is he cute or what?Sluggerr. (Please note Abby was NOT in this picture. If there were sound, you would know exactly why.)Caught some just over the wall:A look at all our loot. Grienke t-shirts. Hats. Beads. Tattoos. A golden glove. A stuffed lion. Balloons. Boy, oh, boy. Did we make out or what?And what happens when you spend all morning running errands, miss your nap, then spend all afternoon playing baseball? Well, this...
* A funny Billy Butler story. Christopher grew up in the 80's in Kansas City, right? What little boy here - that was already a huge baseball fan - did not want to grow up to be George Brett, right? Huge GB fan. HUGE. He has a GB Christmas ornament. Noah pulled that one out of the box and was so excited that he got to hang it on the tree. "Look, Daddy! Billy Butler!" I am certain I heard his daddy's ego pop right then. Surprisingly, Noah has not been tutored in baseball history ever since. I bet that time is coming, though. You just wait and see.