we were SO there!

Okay, I have to admit something. I have been a horrible NHL fan on my blog. I've rarely mentioned my love for hockey and more importantly my love for the San Jose Sharks. I love me some hockey and my Sharkies are my boys! (and boys, if you happen to read this, please forgive me for neglecting to mention you on this here blog. You know I love you and support you. You will win the cup this year....you will.)

Anyways...the Sharks ended their regular season last Saturday and were announced #1 in the western conference on Sunday afternoon. Yay! So what does that mean? Well, being #1 means that we get home ice for the first two games in the quarter-finals of the Stanley Cup Playoffs!!! (For those of you who aren't familiar with hockey, home ice is when we host the other team in our arena) The playoffs started yesterday for the NHL and were were scheduled to play the Colorado Avalanche.

Well, on Tuesday morning, I received a 'tweet' from the Sharks tweeters (I'm not sure what to call those who tweet for the team) that they had just released a limited number of tickets for the first playoff game. Since I wasn't home at the time, I called my husband at work so that he could hop on TicketMaster and try to get some. He didn't answer right away so I tried calling again. He answered on the second call and to my surprise, he'd already scored some! And what was better was that they were FREE!!! Woo Hoo! A guy from work wasn't able to go so Ben snatched them right up!!! Now let me just tell you that playoff tickets are in high demand and they are sold for booco bucks on Craigslist.

This was awesome.

Then when Ben arrived home from work yesterday afternoon, he brought the tickets home and this is what I saw:


Section 128    Row 8

Wait what???!!!

Section 128 is on the lower section and row 8 is 8 rows from the ice....8 ROWS!!!

We've only ever sat in the lower section like three times and only one of those times we actually paid for the seats. They are that expensive. We always get nosebleed seats but thankfully every seat in the arena is a great seat so it's not really that bad.

Not only did I see that, I saw this:


A parking pass!! This was just too cool!

Here we are just before we left. I wore teal eyeshadow, the main color for the Sharks, along with some glitter around my eyes. I also tied some white curling ribbon to my pony tail, but you can't see it in the picture.


So we left little man with my folks at around 6:00 and headed to the Shark tank (that's what the arena is called by Shark fans!) and went inside to check things out. Our seats were right between the Sharks bench and the area where they come out at the beginning of the game. Way cool. I got some good shots of the bench before the game and an official fan photographer took our picture and we were able to upload them from the Sharks website today!

Here it is:


Here's a couple shots of the players bench. The shot on the left is the view from our seats and the one on the right was taken just behind it. Pretty cool to see where the players sit!



Here we are posing in front of the ice:


This is a shot of the jumbotron where all the action is played for those who have people with either big hair or big heads in front of them and can't see the ice! haha!



And a couple shots of the actual action!



We had such a fun time! Unfortunately we didn't win. Boo. But it is a best 4 out of 7 game series so we're not too upset. The 2nd game is Friday night and we're going over to my sister's house to watch it. It just so happens to be my sister's stepdaughter's birthday so we're celebrating that as well. Should be a fun evening!

GO SHARKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!