THE SMITH FAMILY: DA BEARS!!

We have been in Chicago for 8 years, more than enough time to turn us into Bears fans. Of course, it has involved a lot of frustration and heartbreak, but hey it's football and it's Chicago, who doesn't love the Bears?!!

I've already told Dave that I don't ever want to live in a place that doesn't have an NFL team, it's just too much fun. Besides liking the Bears, we also love Soldier Field. Dave had been to a Bears' game but the girls and I never had...until now.

This was our first NFL game ever and even though the game wasn't much to talk about, the whole experience of being in the crowd with everyone wearing team gear and watching the game live was great.

Now Bears tickets can be hard to come by. The wait list for season tickets is decades long, like 20 something years, so basically you have to buy resale tickets and of course the better the teams the higher the prices. For our family, this means that you go with someone you know who is a season ticket holder or else you buy cheap tickets for a game that no one is really interested in. That is how we ended up at a Thursday night preseason game versus the Cleveland Browns. That is also why we brought the girls along.

We sat in the north end zone area and had a pretty good view of the field. Our only bit of bad luck was that after a week of 70 degree temperatures, the day of the game happened to be 90+ degrees with a heat index around 110.

Do you know what that feels like?

Do you know how hot you are going to be after the 30 minute walk from your car to the stadium?

You are going to be HOT and SWEATY. Your clothes are going to be glued to your body and you will be dripping with sweat. This also means that everyone around you is going to be in the same gross condition. Let's just say that it was so hot, I saw enough "manly Bears fans" without their shirts on to last me quite a few seasons. Although, I can't blame them because going into the tunnels to buy Paige some nachos, where there was absolutely no air movement, left me wishing I could take my shirt off too!

We left Soldier Field around 10pm (on a school night...Yikes!) and the heat index was still over 100 degrees. Do you remember, we had a half hour walk to the car? It isn't any shorter on the way back, and to her dismay no one was willing to carry Paige!

But despite all this...we had fun! We were all glad that we had a chance to go to a game. Oh ya, the Bears won too!

Wearing our Bears gear, riding the train into the city. Ashley was still adjusting to waking up early for school in the mornings. (There were a bunch of other fans on the train on their way to the game too. It was pretty obvious that this was our first game, because although we had the right clothes, we apparently forgot to bring the beer--if you know what I mean.)