Quattordici

It started many years before I was born.  When my father chose to make his way to Tuscaloosa instead of his father's Mississippi State.  When my mother chose to make her way to Tuscaloosa instead of her father's Tennessee.  Somehow when those things happened our family started a very steadfast tradition of pulling for the Crimson Tide.

Growing up there was never a question who we cheered for.  We just WERE Alabama fans.  Just like others ARE Auburn fans or Ole Miss fans or Tennessee fans or Florida fans or any other kind of fans.  That's just who we were.

I learned the fight song when I was three.  Well, I've always said three but my two year old learned it right after her second birthday so it could have been earlier.  We have pictures from Tuscaloosa all throughout my life.  My aunt was in college there when I was early elementary school and we went down to see her and visited the sorority houses.  At that point it wasn't a question or if I was going to go there but what I liked best about it.

(And for those of you familiar, while sitting in the dining room of the Alpha Chi house with all my aunt's sorority sisters and my future sister's they asked me what sorority I wanted to be in when I got to Alabama and I told them I wanted to live in the round house.  You can't filter what kids say!)

I remember going to school the day after we won our twelfth National Championship and being ridiculed.  For some reason, it wasn't really cool to be an Alabama fan at that point in time.  But that never really bothered me.  I just kept on keeping on loving my team.

When I got into high school I was tired of my town.  Tired of growing up in a small town where everyone knows everyone and there's so much competition.  So I looked elsewhere for college.  Explored options like North Carolina, Rhodes, Furman, and others.  I was die hard enough that everything sent from "that other school" got put straight in the trash but I did explore options out of state.  But while the pull of those places seemed nice it always came back to whether I really wanted to miss out on four years of school in Tuscaloosa.

Obviously, the answer to that question ended up being no.  I struck out for Tuscaloosa which only solidified our families allegiance.  At this point there is only one of my cousin's who didn't attend Alabama (and she didn't stray for Auburn but for a smaller school).  Charlotte has been to 18-ish games (Jason, what's the actual count because I know you're keeping up!) and James has been to three.  We are a family died in the wool of the Crimson Tide.

So it was no surprise when we headed to New Orleans for the game.  And I'm not sure any family unit could have been happier than our family and extended family when Alabama destroyed LSU.  And we got back to town and waited patiently for the celebration to be announced.  See, we're not only the kind of fans that go to all of the games that we can, we even go to the events where we're not even playing a game!

We headed down to Tuscaloosa on Friday night and enjoyed a very calm weekend in town compared to game weekends.  We headed over to the stadium for the Championship celebration with a lot of other fans and enjoyed the celebration.

We were given some foam fingers at home and brought them down to Tuscaloosa.  I can't stress how much Charlotte loves hers.  We wanted to leave it at the condo but she insisted that we take it to the game.  She got so excited about it but didn't really want to cheer with it.

Possibly during the fireworks?  Charlotte didn't get upset or anything during the celebration.  She loved seeing the band, cheerleaders, and sparkly cheerleaders.  She loved seeing the football players and Coach Saban.  Actually, the "football players, band, and cheerleaders" have all been playing at our house since then.  Charlotte "plays" with them all the time!  But after we got home she told Mom and Dad, "I didn't like the celebration.  It was too loud.  Tell Coach Saban it was too loud."  I think the fireworks must have startled her but she didn't say anything until we got home!

I went and got a bag of popcorn for myself but Charlotte confiscated it.  As soon as she started eating it she looked up at Mom and said, "I was hungry for some popcorn!"  She ate the entire bag and asked for more but we forgot to get some on our way out.

We attempted dinner out that night which was kind of a disaster.  I think we've reached the point where we're going to have to curtail our eating out until James can sit in a high chair and eat table food while we eat because he's not content to be in his car seat anymore.  But despite that it was a fun weekend with family and in celebration of Alabama's Quattordici (#14).