#ucfiesta

Procrastinator that I am, its a little late for this post. However, it is still January...so it counts. Right?

The hubby and I went to the University of Central Florida to get our degrees. That's right, we were Golden Knights. Well, just Knights now. (Useless piece of trivia for the day). Most (almost all) people have no clue about our football team. I don't blame them, we are were a small football school. But this was a record breaking season for us. UCF was able to play in their first BCS bowl game. THE FIESTA BOWL!! Woot! And it was going to be in Glendale, AZ. 

The hubs got us tickets for Christmas and we decided to make a road trip out of the weekend. Hello Arizona, Utah and Nevada (we will see you just from the car.)

We woke up early New Years Day and headed out. The game was that night at 6:30pm and we had about a 5 hour drive to get there. 

After checking into our hotel, we headed to the stadium. The sun was setting and the stadium looked like it was glowing.

I called my sister to let her know we were heading in. She is still a UCF student and flew out to the game that morning.

We met and talked for a bit before heading to find our seats. Her and her boyfriend were sitting in the student section. Michael and I needed to head upstairs, so we set off to find the escalators. We searched...and searched. Then after asking, we found out that we were right next them earlier. Whoops....back we went. After finally reaching them, a man and his wife approached us.

"Hey! We have some extra tickets to sit down here in the lower bowl. Do you guys want them??"

Seeing that they were UCF fans like us, we paused. Is this a scam some how? We are already inside...and whats the worst that could happen?

The guy again- "You won't even be sitting with us, we just have extras"

After 2 seconds of consideration, we looked at each other and responded

"Sure!! Thanks so much!"

So here's where we ended up:

 By this point, everything had been so amazing that I didn't care how the game turned out. I was just so excited to be there. 

But boy, what a game it was. UCF was the underdog and right out of the gate they started to prove everyone wrong. One of my favorite parts was that we could see my sister from our seats. So we would catch each others attention after every amazing play (which there were many) and celebrate from afar. 

After making new friends (whose names I never learned <--- FAIL) and almost losing my voice, UCF are the Fiesta Bowl Champions. They beat Baylor 52 - 42. Finishing the season ranked #10! Woot to the Woot. 

It was an amazing time and a great way to start 2014. And the trip was just beginning.