Two things:
1) I do not like being "The Florida Middletons" - although I know it is nice on the entire Middleton side of our family. But Florida just doesn't sound like us, even after a year and a half.
2) If you didn't know us, "recovering from the weekend" would probably sound like we "partied" or drank a lot. Nope.
So this weekend was the much-anticipated Bama vs Florida football game. Have I mentioned I don't like football? I feel like there's an old post on here somewhere venting that several times... But! This game was being held (held? played? located? what's a football-y thing to say??) in Gainesville. Well, fortunately for us, we know many people in Gainesville who desperately want to see us. ALSO it happened to be the weekend before Tommy's birthday.
Doesn't take a creative mind to figure out what Tommy wanted to do for his birthday!
The plan was to spend the weekend seeing our Gainesville friends and rooting (rooting?? why is that a word.) for the Crimson Tide. I checked with Jon and Kim, asking if we could crash at their place. We also went out on a limb and asked if we could bring Bear along. This would be our first trip with him, and we were all curious to see how he would handle the 3.5 hour drive, being in a new house, and meeting lots of new people.
Of course, I needed to plan a little somethin' somethin' for Tommy's birthday. I messaged several of our friends and asked them to surprise him at one of our favorite restaurants. I asked that they try and bring a balloon or two and that we would let them know when were close to getting into town.
Tommy was preparing in his own way. He ordered a jersey for Bear, complete with his name and the number 13, for 13 national championships. We let the dog practice wearing it a few times, and were also mentally preparing for the comments UF fans would be throwing our way......yes, the plan was to walk around campus during tailgating, sporting our own Alabama colors and with a dog who may or may not enjoy getting hollered at. We're so brave.
So Friday, we packed up the car with everything Bear owns, and a few things of our own, and started our trip. We stopped twice, but both times were for us, so we don't know how long Bear can go without a break. We arrived in Gainesville right around 5, just in time to meet Kim coming home from work and Jon coming home from working out. Jon took a shower, we moved in and let Bear get a good look at the place and his new friends. We sat and chatted for a little bit while Kim secretly let everyone know we were going to be at the restaurant soon.
We walked in, and in front of a full place, our good friends led everyone in a round of "Happy Birthday" and made Tommy feel completely loved and slightly embarrassed. We stayed at Rolls & Bowls (I would highly suggest you try this place if you're ever in the G'ville) for a little too long chatting with everyone, and then went back to the Moller's. We played a great type of name game, and finished up with a couple rounds of "mafia". We stayed up too late and laughed too much.
The next morning, the guys went golfing, and to make it to their 7:00 t-time (it may be "tee" time but, whatevs) Tommy had to wake up at 5:45. By 7 Kim was also out the door to run, and I was unfortunately wide awake, even though I had planned to enjoy sleep instead of being like the crazy people I was living with. I ended up watching a re-run of Boy Meets World and walking Bear around their neighborhood.
By 10:00, Kim and I were back out the door to SHOP! We rarely get to just buy things for fun, but since the boys were playing with some money, we got to use the same amount to have a little of our own kind of fun!
By 1:00, we had all eaten lunch and were donning our separate team colors. Bear looked manly in his jersey, and I got to wear an awesome felt-flower clip (shout out Bella Designs!) of grey and ruby red. We were ready to face the madness.
We thought that the dog would get too excited. That he would jump on people and be trying to run after cool looking strangers and not listen to us. He could've even snapped at people if he got annoyed. Or he could've been scared of the thousands of fans pouring into the campus.
But let me just brag, he was amazing. At first he did want to pull to people, then he realized there were way too many people to try and see all of them. People would walk up to him and hug and pet him. They would shyly stick out their palms. They would wait to see if we would allow them to come close. Some would kiss him on the head. I let kids give him treats and talked to random adults about their own dogs. We told people about the Humane Society.
Uf fans would shout "nice dog! ugly jersey!" and "animal abuse!" But some even wanted pictures with him.
One college kid did the gator chop AT Bear, hollering "gator bait! gator bait!" Bear started walking up to him, and the guy slightly froze. Then Bear gently licked his hand twice and walked away. Of course, every Gator fan there "AWW"-ed. I hope the guy was humbled a little bit.
And we walked miles, and miles, and miles.
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