The Doran Family: Go Tiiiigers!

When we learned that Clemson would be making into the College Football Playoff National Championship game, I felt that it was such a huge opportunity to potentially see them win and so I talked Andrew (albeit easily) into buying tickets.

We flew with Scarlett down to Glendale in early January and it was a nice, sunny weekend away from the rain. It was so incredibly fun to see so many Clemson fans converge on the west coast. From the time we got on the plane and landed at the airport to the time we left, there were fans everywhere... all sporting their spirit orange! We had a terrific weekend event though the Tigers lost to Alabama. It was a tough game, but an experience I'm glad we had.

I was impressed with the amount of activities for families including the fan central area, concert areas, and being able to see ESPN's setup, plus the 5k run for teachers. It was a phenomenal family event. We enjoyed all of these activities over the weekend and on Sunday night hired a babysitter for Scarlett so that we could attend a Clemson Alumni party at the W in Scottsdale which was great people watching. On Monday, we also had the same babysitter come so that Andrew and I could go to the game. There was lots of fan spirit and energy and we were so sad to come away with a loss, but grateful to be able to root on those Tigers! Now, crossing our fingers that they make it again next year!

Here's what it looked like when I laid out all of the orange clothing I could find to pack to go root on Clemson!

Here we are at the fan concert experience with ESPN SportsCenter in the background. Later that evening, we tried to squeeze into the crowd while they were live on air. Neat to see!

Fan Central was very fun ... here we are posing at the entrance:

One of my favorite parts was seeing these women who sew footballs everyday for Wilson Athletics. This is an incredibly manual and labor intesive process. It was impressive and so hard on the body/hands. I was in awe of their craftmanship!

Our ESPN SportsCenter view at night:

Sunday morning we ran our first 5k as a family - ever. I initially signed up thinking it'd be a nice thing to do to honor our friend Cale who had recently died on a run with a running group. We ran this race in :32 minutes with the stroller without stopping and were quite proud of ourselves. Since then, this year, we've ran in 3 races and are enjoying the 5k experience as a family!