Shenanigans: Game, Set, Match

For those of you who don't live in Austin, you might not know, but the Davis Cup quarterfinals are being held here this weekend...specifically the Spain vs. USA match. Because Lizzie and I are learning tennis this summer, we had the chance to go downtown yesterday for a Davis Cup Fun Day. And fun it was!!

When we got down to the UT tennis courts, we got ourselves signed in and picked up our "scavenger hunt" cards. Basically we had a bunch of different activities we had to complete to try and win the Jr. Davis Cup.

Here we are sporting our scavenger hunt cards. Not sure what is up with Lizzie...she should be excited to be here!

And then we had to wait. Why, you ask? Same reason every time...Mommy and Daddy got us there good and early, as usual. While we were waiting, Daddy took some pictures of Lizzie and I posing with some of the USA team players. Okay...it's not really the "real" players, just their pictures, but we figured this was probably the closest we would get to them.

Finally it was time to get down to business. The first game we played was Lobster Catch. One of us had to stand and gently toss a ball to the other person. The other person's job was to catch the ball between two racquets. I did a fantastic job of bouncing the ball to Lizzie. So good, in fact that she was able to catch one. Lizzie, on the other hand, didn't understand what "gently" meant. She kept firing the balls at me really hard so that I couldn't catch even one!

After this game, we took a quick break to get our faces painted and make posters cheering on the USA Davis Cup team. Lizzie copied my sign because she's still a baby and doesn't know how to spell.

After our break it was back to the court for some more games. Over on the courts for kids our age, we got to play two new games. The first one was called Alligator Alley. Everyone lined up in 2 lines and we had to roll the balls back and forth to each other using only our racquets. Then, one by one, we each got to take a turn being the alligator. When we were the alligator, we were trying to avoid being hit by the balls. When we weren't the alligator, we got to try and hit the alligator. I love games where you try to hit people!!!

The Alligator Alley

Lizzie making it safely through the alley.

My leap through the alley!

Then it was time for some Koosh Ball Tennis. Not much really to describe here...it's exactly what it sounds like. We practiced passing and catching a koosh ball using only our racquets. It was actually a lot of fun!

After Koosh Ball Tennis we got to head over to one of the big kid courts to try out something new...wheel chair tennis. Before we could test out the chair, we hit some ground shots with one of the pros.

Then it was wheel chair time. It was weird trying to move them around. It took me a little bit to figure out how to make it turn. Lizzie never figured it out. She just got out of the chair and turned it on her own. But even better than just rolling around in the chairs was trying to hit tennis balls in them. It was really wild!!

Finishing wheel chair tennis basically had us finishing everything on our scavenger hunt list except for one thing: shaking hands with one of the players. We found out that they weren't even going to show up at the event for another hour so we took a quick break for dinner and hit a German Biergarten that happened to be right down the street. We timed it pretty perfectly and only had to wait about 15 minutes before we spied the team coming from their practice at the Erwin Center.

That's them in the distance!

And here they are up closer. That's Andy Roddick in the black shirt.

Once they arrived, I'm sure you can imagine the craziness that ensued. Each player was put at a different court to hit balls with the kids. Mommy decided that we were going to head to Andy Roddick's court (along with 75% of the people in attendance). It was mass chaos, but in the end Lizzie and I each had the chance to hit 3 balls apiece with Andy. It was really cool! And Mommy even got pictures!!