Well that last post was getting a bit long, so I thought I’d write a separate one for last night. The night went much better. We stuck Joel in his crib in one of those bathrooms, and that seemed to work out pretty well. That allowed us to sleep on the bed, which was much better than the smelly fold-out couch.

We also decided that not all of us would go to see the Cubs on Thursday. There were a couple of reasons for that:

• We hadn’t gotten tickets yet and there was limited availability. When I looked a few days before we left there was nothing available, but last night I was able to find a few.
• Even though I (somewhat deservedly) get ribbed for being a cheapskate, I don’t mind spending money when it’s going to return good entertainment value. For instance I think spending the money on this hotel was a good idea. But realistically, Amy, Joel and Carolyn (mostly because of Amy and Joel) were not really going to be able to enjoy the game, so spending $25 each for them didn’t seem to be a good idea.
• A corollary to #2 is a little something I like to call “Cardboard Box syndrome”. You know, you give a kid a toy and they’re more interested in the box it came in. And while I do believe that as parents you need to make your kids enjoy new experiences, since a lot of times they don’t really KNOW what they want or would enjoy, I don’t believe it’s necessary to always buy your kids tons of stuff for them to enjoy themselves. In fact, if you asked Amy or Scott their favorite thing about this vacation, they would probably say that it was swimming in the pool 🙂
• Speaking of Joel, we weren’t sure quite what to do with him. He doesn’t need a seat being an infant, but if we don’t get him a seat, then we have nowhere to put his car seat. Which makes it quite hard to get him to sleep, which might make the whole outing a bit of madness.

So, in the end, we got 2 seats in Section 219. Hopefully it will be fun.