Another football season has come to a bittersweet end. Bitter because of the final losses for both Derek and Peter. Sweet because we are able to reclaim a couple weeknights.

The first words out of Peter’s mouth when he woke up Tuesday morning were, “I’m so happy we don’t have to be anywhere tonight!” Fast forward two hours later, when Jim calls after a meeting and exclaims, “Drop everything, we’re going to the Hawks game tonight!”

I told the kids I had good news and bad news. The bad news: we have somewhere to be this night. The good news: we are going to the United Center! Someone generously donated their sky box tickets, so we were also able to invite others.

Peter brought his buddy Luke,

a family from our small group joined us, which made Ruth’s night, as she had a shadow-buddy all night.

She was also quite interested in the game.

My parents joined us as well. My mom tried a couple times to get the attention of the jumbo-tron camera, sadly to no avail.

While the rest of the world was watching baseball, we watched an exciting hockey game (AND baseball, thanks to the TV in our suite).

We couldn’t have gone to a better game. The Hawks won big, and their opponent tallied many penalties. Because of this, our fun Hawks experience carried over several days.

Because they scored more than two goals, we got 1/2 off Papa John’s pizza for lunch one day.

And because the opposing team scored more than five penalties, we ate six free Chick-Fil-A sandwiches for lunch another day.

All this from “sacrificing” our first free weeknight since the beginning of football season!