The Greatest Place in the World

I went to a Cincinnati Spikes game yesterday (sortta...turned out it was two visiting teams...doesn't matter).

I didn't really know there was such a thing, but there is this beautiful baseball park with all the normal stuff - manicured field, jumbotron next to the scoreboard, concession stand....everything...right there in beautiful downtown Mason, Ohio.

It was free to get tickets.  In fact there were no tickets...you just sit wherever you like.  We went front row...and then bumped it back a couple just because we could.

this one was like a t-ball, but the ball floated as if an Angel was holding it...

Before we even went into the park the kids played on the giant inflatables that were out in the parking lot.

Those were free too.

It was a warm day, so the natural thing to do is to wander over to the ice cream truck.  This isn't the airbrushed truck you see with the guy that looks like Jerry Garcia's twin brother, the one that was too strung out on crack to hang with those uptight guys in his brother's band, and smells like wet garbage and freezer burn.  This was more like the ice cream truck of your childhood.  The only difference is that the ice cream that fills it is all free.

Yup - free ice cream truck.

Then you go into the game and sit in the front row to enjoy baseball on a beautiful down.

If you've ever taken kids to a game you know that they enjoy about a minute and a half of the game before they want you to buy them a miniature bat and an oversized pretzel.

Pretzels that were slightly larger than Brad's hats cost fifty cents.  If they made you thirsty you could get a bottled water for a quarter, or a Diet Coke for fifty cents.

Our kids loved the ringpops...so we'd toss them a quarter and tell them to keep the change...they were ten cents...

We were living like the Huxtables yo