The Best Coldest Day of My Life

Today was one of those really, really exciting days. A day that makes you want to pee your pants in excitement and then tell everyone you know your so excited that you peed your pants! Today was also so cold, I may or may not have searched how to determine if you have frostbite. It was the best coldest day of my life.

Today was the day Seattle welcomed home our Super Bowl Champions, the Seahawks!

My office is one block from the parade route and my boss was kind enough to let us leave work to attend the event - with pay! I know right, best coldest day of my life! I decided to get up early and go into work about an hour early. I wanted to get a head start on my work load and try to avoid the masses of people headed downtown for the big event.



I promise I was wearing my Hawks gear! It was just underneath my coat!

My friend, and co-worker, Sarah and her husband also came downtown early. Her husband headed straight over to the parade route to stake out a spot where we could all join them later. Sarah and I brought them some hot apple cider around 8:00 am and the streets were already starting to fill up!

By the time we put on our extra layers of clothing and headed over to watch the parade at 10:00 am the streets were a mess. There were people everywhere! Thank goodness Sarah's husband had been saving us a spot! We were front row and center for the big show. Now all we had to do was wait for the players to arrive at our spot.

Can you see the people in the trees? There were literally people everywhere!

We waited and waited. There were so many people at the event that the players were having problems getting to the floats! It was estimated there were 700,000 fans attending the parade, that is more people than even live in Seattle!  The whole city went into Beast Mode!

There were so many fans it was difficult to clear the streets to make way for the ducks! The parade finally got started about 1.5 hours late, but we didn't care. We just kept waiting and waiting. Letting the excitement grow. Joel was watching the live news feed at his work and sending me updates on the parades progress.

These are a few of the wonderful people I work with!
Tara, Mandi, Cindy, Sarah and Me!

SEA...

...HAWKS



Nobody was going to block our view or take our spot, not with Stewart on the job!

Finally, we could see the players coming! It was happening! I cheered and yelled and welcomed home my team with so much excitement that my voice was a bit sore. I instantly forgot about how cold I was and I just cheered. And tried to take a few pictures.

At first I was really mad the players were inside buses! Weren't they supposed to be on the ducks?
Oh wait, these are the family members of the players. Oh, okay.

LYNCH!

So many skittles went everywhere. I later found a few in the hood of my coat!

Blue Thunder!

Here comes Paul Allen!

Jay Inslee, our Governor

Steve Raible, the Voice of the Seahawks

Blitz!



Coach Pete!

OH MY GOODNESS, THERE IT IS!

Russell Wilson and the Lombardi Trophy

LOB Baby!

It wasn't long after the last of the players went by that the streets turned into a zoo. There were people everywhere. Most of the 12th Man followed the team down to the stadium for the rally. For me, it was back to the office and back to work. But that was okay with me. I had welcomed home the team and I was ready to warm up.

It was an amazing day and I am so excited to have been there. There is only one first Super Bowl Championship. There will never be another day like today. Today was the best coldest day of my life.

XOJO