Teddy Bear Toss

Tonight we were back at the Gwinnett Arena to see the Gladiators play ice hockey, and as you can see above, we brought a few friends with us!  

It was the "Teddy Bear Toss" game, and the idea is simple:  everyone brings a teddy bear, and as soon as the home team scores, everyone throws that teddy bear out onto the ice.  The funny thing about tonight is that I was explaining that it could happen really quick.  I mean, one time back in 2016, we saw the Gladiators score just eight seconds into the game!  So we were ready, and it was a good thing, because just fifty-one seconds into the game, there it was, the first Gladiators point of the game.  And with that came a huge celebration, a lot of noise, and a lot of teddy bears being tossed out onto the ice.  Later on, they counted these up and there were 15,000 of them!

As a part of the evening's package, we got three teddy bears, one for each of us.  Maddie promptly named hers Gordon, which on the surface may seem like a random name, but it's actually named for Gordon Bombay, the coach of the Mighty Ducks.  I had gone down to the desk to collect our bears, and for about 51 seconds of the game, we had six teddy bears with us.  That changed quickly, of course! 

We kept Gordon and the other bears for the remainder of the game, and I had also gone to get some food from the 'gourmet' food place there on the second floor.  There was actually some gluten free options there, some fries and barbecue that Mom could eat, while Maddie had some hot wings and fries herself.  Not so hot, she said, of course!

It took a good while to clean up all those teddy bears and plush animals from the ice.  They just kept going and going.  Even at later goals, random teddy bears would fly out onto the ice, some leftover ones from late arrivals or whatever.

Pick-up trucks drove out on the ice to collect all the bears, and it still took a long time.  They had an Elvis song playing at one point, "Teddy Bear," which was great fun.

You can actually see the mascots above nearby the teddy bears that we threw down there.  In between the mascots is a brown mass, closer to the blue mascot.  Our teddy bear was there, along with the purple one that we found earlier at a thrift shop.  Those were some of the last to leave the ice, actually!

All the donations go to charity, so it's all good fun!  It gave us a chance to finish up our food too, before the game got started again.

It was a fun time, and the game was pretty good, although we were in a pretty big deficit by the end of period two, and it proved to be insurmountable.  Still, we scored three to their five, and as a bonus, we got to see the Zamboni again!

It was a fun night.  It was so cold and wet outside, raining and 39 degrees on that long walk to the car.  I felt so bad for Mom, but we heated the car up very well, and were comfortable again in no time.  We got back late, of course, and we have to get up early tomorrow.  So no reading tonight, just prayers and thanksgiving for a wonderful evening together.

Earlier it was Team Edge practice, which was fun as always.  At one point, to practice their aggressive screams, the students actually walked outside, and yes, they screamed at cars that drove by on the main road out there.

Which was funny.  Anyway, on the way we had to stop by for some shopping for conversation hearts, as it is an addiction for Maddie.  There was - at home - time for a bit of homework, exercise, cleaning up more Christmas stuff and the basement, and a day indoors where it's warmer.  It was a nice day, but a quiet one leading up to a pretty fun night that you see above.