Our SUPER Day!

It has taken some time to go through and then upload this set of pictures, but finally we are ready to tell our story of our SUPER BOWL day!! It is still hard to believe that we actually got to participate in the festivities, and these pictures don't really do the whole experience justice!! But here it goes...

Our day started pretty early, dropping the boys off at Gramaw & Papaw's around 7:30am. We enjoyed some quiet car time and stop at Good's Doughnuts on our way to meet our hosts for the day...Paul and Steve from Canon. We met them outside their hotel on 38th & High School Rd and rode with them downtown. The picture above is taken right outside our parking garage (where we got to park in spot 5!) looking down Capital Ave...as you can see, we were literally less than 2 blocks from Lucas Oil Stadium. Pretty awesome parking!!!

Although we don't actually get to watch the news much anymore, but if you know Kristoffer and I, you know that we have thing for local celebrities. So we were pretty excited to see Randy Ollis from Channel 8 first thing in the morning! (Open your eyes Randy!)

We were actually AT the Super Bowl!


Steve (L) and Paul (R)...what fun guys!

We spent the morning walking around taking in all the sites downtown. Of course, in Indianapolis there has to be race cars.

The city was so beautifully decorated and we were so happy to be a part of it!

I loved these football decorations that lined the streets.

After a delicious breakfast at the Omni Hotel (where they were having a huge reception for all of the NBC staff) we made our way down to the circle. We were walking around so early in the day yet that we didn't really encounter many crowds. The only crowd we really saw were people waiting in line for a Jimmy Fallon taping.

Beautiful morning!

I took this picture for my mom. All of the streets downtown had been renamed for NFL teams.

After walking around downtown, we made our way over to the Indiana History Museum for the pre-game party we had tickets for. As we were walking there we loved the look of the JW hotel. As we were crossing the street by the hotel, we saw the motorcade and buses pass by for one of the teams.

The museum was actually closed for the party, but currently there is a Jim Irsay exhibit going on and part of it is our Vince Lombardi trophy!

There were probably 1200-1300 people at the party...it was all you could eat with different food stations, hot appetizer trays and an open bar.

Throughout the party there were different performances from Cirque USA.

They were also showing an IMAX film of highlights from the 2011 football season.

Some of the Cirque shows were a bit strange!

In the main area of the party they had a lot of round tables and maybe 20 rows of chairs. We realized a bit too late the we should have gotten a table, and by the time we tried they were all taken. So we claimed 4 chairs in the second row, not really thinking that we would be so close for the main event.....

Paula Deen!!

Not bad to be in the second row for a Paula Deen cooking demo!

She and her husband, Michael were a hoot!

She was so gracious and would answer anyone's questions and posed for many pictures with people.

While Paula was onstage "cooking", her husband roamed the crowd taking questions from people.

She was candid and answered questions from "what is the best potato for making mashed potatoes?" (white and/or red) to "if she had stopped smoking yet?" (no).

She had the executive chef from the catering company there helping her prepare the dishes while she answered questions.

This is one of the Cirque girls. The guy taking her picture was a hilarious guy who along with his brother in law, were sitting right next to us. They were from New Jersey and had won the tickets from their local newspaper. They road tripped it out here and were having the time of their lives. They were so funny...and very loud!

After the demo we all got to sample one of Paula's dishes...bbq chicken stuffed cornbread muffins.

The next speaker was Archie Manning!! He also fielded questions from the crowd and was great to listen to. A lot of the questions were about how they raised such great boys, and we were happy to hear him talk about how faith played such an integral role in their upbringing.

After the party, our next stop was THE SUPER BOWL!!! We were having so much fun at the party that we often joked...oh yeah, we still have a football game to go to!

So many people! It took us a little while to get into the building and then up to our seats.

Our seats were in section 418 and had a great view of the field!

Right in front of our section Bob Costas and Rodney Harrison were during their pre-game show.

Refs ready for their big game!

Unfortunately, the Patriots were the team that were warming up right in front of us.

Belichek, can't you ever wear a nicer shirt!?

We were still able to spot Eli warming up across the field.

Kristoffer had the camera for most of the game, so I was surprised to see some of the pictures that were on the SD card. This one took me a bit to see why he took it....the large screens are from hhgregg!

We were the only people in our section who were super excited to see the IU Marching Hundred!

Here come the Giants!

Coin toss

Opening kick off

Giants first play from the ling of scrimmage.

As soon as the whistle was blown for halftime, the stage hands got to work putting together the halftime show.

It was amazing to see it all come together, we were really sirprised by just how many people it took to put it all together.

Everything set up, just waiting on Madonna!

We LOVED the show!!

We all were given little flashlights to help with part of the halftime show. This picture really doesn't do it justice, but it looked so amazing in person!

There was such a great feeling being in the stadium and cheering with the crowd...which was probably 70% Giants fans and 30% Patriot fans.

We were excited when the confetti started coming down...and may or may not have brought a few pieces home with us!

GIANTS WIN!!

Just like with halftime, as soon as the whistle was blown, the workers got to it putting together the stage for the trophy ceremony.

YAY Giants!! Steve (far right) is an actual Giants fan and sported an Eli Manning jersery for the game.

It is extremely hard to see it, but if you look closely you can see the trophy going up the back stairs right by Eli (and the girl in the bright green shirt).

What a super end to our super day!! It was such a great experience and we are very thankful for our friends at Canon for inviting us along!!