Daytona 500 Week!

 Our 3rd Annual Daytona 500!

Our spot could not get any better unless we were up against the fence. Its the same spot we had last year, and unless a spot at the fence opens up, it will continue to be "our" spot every year.

We are on the inside of turn 4. From our platform we can see the race cars after they come out of turn 2,

go into turn 3, and watch them fly around turn 4.

We had a great time at the race, even tho it was FREEZING!  We are all wimps having moved to Sunny Warm Florida from Sunny Hot Phoenix.  The highs all week were in the 40's and 50's. The lows in the low 30's, high 20's.  YUCK!  We bought a small space heater (tent safe) and you could still see our breaths at night and in the mornings. We bundled up in layers upon layers. I personally wore sweatpants, a t-shirt, 4 (yes 4!) sweatshirts, and then my suade jacket, beanie hat and gloves. It was also too cold to spend much time outside of a race on our wonderful platform that Mike built. (And I dare say that ours was the most awesome platform there. It fits like a puzzle, and didn't take hardly anytime for him to set up, and secure it for us and the kids.)

Look at the mesh wire fence securely stapled in so tight that nothing or noone could fall from it. Mike builds the platform with 4x4s attached to the truck, Calebs putting green for a floor,

and then 2x4s for the railings. He then bolts everything together.

No nails!

The kids cars,toys and dolls couldn't fall thru. They loved being up there. As long as they were bundled up.

The boys really liked THIS view from the platform. 

The people directly in front of us hung up this towel.

I was wondering why they were giggling so hard and not watching the race.

We had so much stuff this year that we had to rent a U-Haul trailer to transport it all in.

We had learned from last year when a freak wind came out of nowhere and destroyed our tent and canopy setup, that we needed to secure it much better.

So Mike got HUGE stakes that you twist into the ground that secured the bottoms.

Then he tied up all the top corners to our truck, so that there was no way that it could blow away.

 It was strong and sturdy.  

We had 3 rooms. It was warm in the rooms. At least as warm as it could be.

One room was our tent which has 2 bedrooms and a open area, another was a storage room for our extras, and the other was our kitchen and table area. We had all kinds of yummy BBQ food like steak, brats, sausages, hotdogs and hamburgers. Lots of snackies like popcorn, cookies, chips, dips. Breakfasts was either chorizo, bacon or sausage and eggs on bagels or in burritos. Cereal for the kids. Lots of good food!

We bought these marshmallow Peep Frogs. Elektra was kissing hers. I asked her what she was doing and she said, "Trying to turn him into a Prince."

 It was due to rain, so we had brought 5 large tarps that we draped over all the rooms and tied them down to the stakes and the truck. Tarps aren't shown here. But we were competely dry, and safe from the wind.

It was Strong and Sturdy.

 Friday afternoon the wind and rains picked up. Mike and I were sitting in our kitchen area in our chairs sipping coffee and cooking our hamburgers. The kids had already eaten their burgers and were in the tent watching movies on the TV or playing Play Station.

 (Yes, we are THOSE parents that bring a TV,  DVD player, a portable DVD player and PlayStation for the kids entertainment.  I brought my DSi and Zacharys DS. Although I did talk Mike out of bringing the Wii. We were there for 6 days after all) 

We were talking about how very proud we were of our Strong and Sturdy setup. *sigh* This is something you should never do. Never pat yourself on the back until it is over.

Our setup was doing just fine until all of a sudden a big crash sounded on top of us, and all the ceilings and walls caved in. Suddenly there were screams from inside the tent where the kids were. 

We had to crawl in the tent to pull the kids out.

They were crying and freaking out. Then we heard voices from all over screaming, "Are you OK? Is everyone OK? Anyone hurt? OMG get this thing off their stuff!"

Someones platform had blown away in the wind gusts, picked up someone elses tent and blew them on top of our structures. The platform poles literally flattened the kids bedroom in the tent. Thank God, they were in the open area and missed getting hit by mere inches.  Then people were pulling the covers off of us from inside our area. We had a dozen or more people trying to get to us to get us out. We quickly put the kids inside the truck with strict orders to calm down and stay put.  We then set about trying to get all the stuff off of ours. Our grill had tipped over throwing our burgers out, thankfully the fire had somehow been put out.

   I should of taken pictures, but it was so hectic. The wind and rain were strong, and all of our stuff was now vunerable to being blown away since our canopies roofs had collapsed and the walls snapped in half.  It took the better part of an hour for all of us to remove the others stuff. Then we had to try and salvage what we could of our stuff. We gave up trying to rebuild what we had.  It was getting dark and the wind and rain were still going strong, so we threw everything that we could in the U-Haul trailer, resecured the tarp over our tent and tried to sleep. Mike and I never did get to eat dinner.

  Saturday was calmer with no rains, so we were able to set up the broken canopy over the kitchen area.

We spent alot of the day trying to decide what to save, and what we should toss. 

(We ended up tossing the canopies).

But Mike being the awesome man that he is, got a little area secure again for the kids to play, and we were able to spend the late afternoon and evening watching the race and playing with the kids.

They have a big collection of NASCAR diecast cars.  They race them, crash them, and make art with them.

On Sunday morning we borrowed someone next to us infield passes (they owed us!) and went out and got Paul, the owner of Mikes company and his wife Donna, who are big NASCAR fans, and brought them to our camp site.  Paul who is of course also an engineer, was very impressed with Mikes platform.

They stayed and visited with us for awhile. They live in Maryland, but also have a house in Daytona.  Their seats were in the top grandstands, so after a bit we walked them out, and took the kids to the Event Center to buy some more cars (because they needed more).

Caleb, who is loving reading, also got a Daytona Book. He loves Transformers BumbleBee, remember he was BumbleBee for Halloween, so he was very excited to see the BumbleBee Car there.

Then we settled down and watched the Daytona 500. Although it took alot longer than a normal race due to potholes in the track. I didn't mind the long break tho because I was able to cook dinner and not miss anything.  It finished up at night, and we were all happy with the 1st time winner, Jamie McMurray.

It was quite the week. Lots of excitement! Lots of drama! Lots of things we could of done without. But over all, it was all good. We are already looking forward to next years Daytona 500! Maybe for once it won't be windy or rainy, or cold!