Did any of you fall in love with the Wisconsin Badgers men’s basketball team during their March Madness run? My husband and I are both UW-Madison alumni. We met there and are raising some pretty big Badger fans ourselves. The Badgers had an incredible run, beating undefeated Kentucky to make it to the National Championship game.
A lot of people did not expect it to go down quite like that, which meant that a lot of tickets were suddenly for sale. My husband became addicted to looking at tickets. On the day of the game he came home on his lunch, and was still checking tickets. His leftover burrito was warming up in the microwave, the kids were eating lunch and our house was the general disaster that it always is.
The game was in Indianapolis, just under four hours away. Our Badgers were playing for the championship just four hours away! Tickets were pretty cheap, Quinn wanted to go in the worse way– “it can be my birthday present and I don’t need a party”. His birthday is in October.
I couldn’t take it anymore. I finally told Ross–Buy two tickets, take your son! You will never regret going to a National Championship game and honestly, I don’t know when or if we will have another chance. So he did.
And just like that, we threw everything into suitcase, threw the kids into the car, dropped the dog off at my parents and hit the road. As we were getting on the interstate Ross said, “Oh, my burrito!”. Yup, it was still in the microwave. The kids half-eaten hot dogs were still on the kitchen table as well, but all that was behind us.
We had just enough time to make it to Indianapolis, check into the hotel and say goodbye to Ross and Quinn as they headed off to their adventure.
We lost. But it didn’t even matter. The boys still had so much fun. All the hype walking to the stadium, the sea of red, the team that had become America’s sweethearts and a little boy dreaming about his day in Badger red. Yup, it was all worth it.
Meanwhile, I had the other two back in the hotel. Got them hyped up on sugar, then attempted to get them to sleep in a hotel. I watched the game on mute so I didn’t disturb them. I was so excited for Quinn to have his experience and for my husband to live out his dream, that I couldn’t even be bitter that I wasn’t there. I was just happy for them.
The whole reason the gang came along, is because we had another bucket list item we were checking off on this trip. I’ve longed to take the kids to the Indianapolis Children’s Museum, the world’s largest children’s museum. It is constantly listed as a “must do”.
I supposed that helped with the loss a bit, we didn’t drive all that way and get a hotel for a night for just the game. We spent the whole next day, from open to close, at the children’s museum. The kids loved it. There was so much to see and do and I barely got an pictures. Museum lighting really isn’t picture friendly. The highlight of the museum was the Transformer’s exhibit. Now Hudson yells “BUMBLEBEE” at every yellow car we pass.
We didn’t get to do a fancy spring break vacation, but we sure had fun knocking these two things off of our bucket list!
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