New Year's at the Rose Bowl!

What a New Year's we had! It was the biggest New Year's plans we've had by far in our 12 years of marriage.  The advantage of marrying a former college ball player is that when his team goes to the Rose Bowl, we get to have a vacation!  So we flew out to L.A. on New Year's Eve and spent the evening at Universal Citywalk where the official TCU Frog Bash was held.  Here are the pictures:

First we ate at Bubba Gump's.  We love this place.  They don't have one in Texas. I don't really know why not.  We do great seafood down here.  Anyway, everytime we're somewhere that has one, we usually go.  It goes back to the 6 months we spent in San Francisco.  Great food and restaurants everywhere, but if you want just some normal, southern, fried food you can forget it.  Except at Bubba Gump's! It was our saving-grace out there!

Kong was after me...do you blame him?  Just kidding!  Lighten up, people!

Mike and me from one of the balconies. Do you like my tiara?  I insisted - who can go out to a big New Year's Party and not have a tiara?

The Frog Bash was at the Hard Rock Cafe.  If only we hadn't spent 2 hours freezing our tooshies off before we went in. I was frozen to the core and even though it was fun my body couldn't quite recover.  I'm super-cold natured and wore sandals in the 40 degree weather (I was in L.A. and nothing else that I brought worked with my outfit - what can I say?).  By the way, every time I go to California it either rains or they have unseasonably cold weather.  Note to California:  Next time I plan a trip to see you, would you please have the perfect temps and sunny skies that I keep hearing about?  Thanks.

Okay, back to Hard Rock - looks pretty cool, huh?  The Houston Hard Rock definitely does not look this cool on the outside.

Mike and some football buddies and their wives...

Random person (though we were all TCU people so not completely random) took our photo.  Wish she had stepped a few feet over so this TV wouldn't be right above my head.  But oh well.  Still a cute photo. 

I honestly don't know how I made it to midnight California time.  We had no intention of staying so late, but you only live once, right?  The party was really fun and we left as the fireworks were going off!

After burning the midnight oil, we opted to NOT go to the Rose Bowl Parade.  Apparently you have to buy tickets AND get up at 5am.  Yes, you only live once, BUT when you're a mom of 4 kids under age 7, sleeping in is also a once-in-a-lifetime occasion, just about.

So here we are before the Rose Bowl.  This trip really was planes, trains, and automobiles, and even scaling fences!  It took us 2 hours to get from our hotel to the Rose Bowl.  It was insane but it turned out to be a gorgeous day.  A little chilly but still beautiful.  Look closely - the front of the Rose Bowl is in the background.

The bowl...and if you look in the bottom left corner you'll see...

...the ESPN setup!  I didn't know they were there until I got all the way up to my seat in the nosebleed section.  My plan was to come back down in a few minutes and take a picture of the sportscasters WITH their heads, but they quickly were gone.  Note to Kirk Herbstreit:  How could you have left only moments after I got there?  If only you had known I was close by....

Jet fly over...while this never ceases to be impressive, we actually get these frequently at Aggie games since it is a military school.  But what was really cool that I only videoed were the Navy Seals parachuting onto the field.  That was really cool!

Here comes the team....

Superfrog...

Halftime....the band....

The TCU Showgirls....

The victory....

The celebration....

Mike and me after TCU won!

After a frightening ride in a friend's truck back to another friend's hotel, we ate dinner in a revolving restaurant at the top of the hotel.  Pretty cool view of downtown L.A.  Didn't photograph too well, but still.

And this concludes Part I of the trip!  It was very cool to see TCU go to the Rose Bowl. It may never happen again.  Huge deal for such a tiny school.  However, I think everyone who follows college football would agree they should have had the chance to play for the National Championship.  But this is a family blog, so we'll save that topic for somewhere else!

Happy New Year!