battle of the carolinas: football is finally here!

ever since steve spurrier moved to columbia 9 years ago, we've kicked off most of our seasons with thursday night games. this is really fun because a. it's the first college football game of the year and b. you get to spend all of labor day relaxing {read as drinking} instead of feeling sick to your stomach all saturday.

this year was a special thursday night game. born in south carolina, raised in north carolina, educated in south carolina, and back to living in north carolina, i'm a carolina girl through & through. and although most my life has been spent in the carolina to the north, my heart lies in the one to the south. and if you live in either carolina, you know there is an epic battle of who is "the real carolina." talk about the most annoying thing ever. unc fans think it's completely asinine that anyone would think of usc as carolina. i have spent the majority of my post grad life trying to get unc fans to understand that it's the exact same thing as them thinking unc is carolina, but they just don't seem to get it. 

my brother in law is one of these "unc is the only carolina" people, as he graduated from chapel hill. so since my sister & i are usc grads, we decided to make this game a family affair. around noon on thursday, we all packed up into brian's car and headed south on i-77 to god's country. 

my friends are amazing and love me so ammie was so kind to let my family use her parking spot. this made things so much easier for us & brian - this was his first usc game since his stroke. we unpacked and set up with ammie's dad & his friends and started the party! two of our cheer friends that my sister coached came and met up with us, and the rest of my gang stopped by for a bit too. around 5pm we headed into the stadium to make sure we got to our seats in time for the pre-game show {ex-cheerleader requirement}. 

{the set-up}

{the spread}

{carolina + carolina + fireball = doing it right}

{my babes}

{us with mia & rachel! leigh and i are very thankful our uniforms weren't made out of spandex when we cheered at usc!}

{melting in the upper deck}

it was unbelievably hot {per the usual in cola} and we were pretty much sitting on the sun, so i spent the first half of the game trying not to die. a few touchdowns and quarters later, they suspended the game due to bad weather approaching. that was a first! so after filing out of the stadium, kristin called and i knew she was close to where i was, so i ran to hug her neck {and meet the boyfriend who is totally adorable} for all of 2 minutes and 4 hugs before the sky fell out. i ran back to the tailgate to find my family gone & thankfully ammie was sitting in her dad's car, so i jumped in. it rained like crazy for about an hour before we hauled our sleepover stuff over to our friend's tailgate where truck bed drinking commenced. 

{williams brice stadium}

{my sweet carolina}

once we finally decided to leave, i forced ammie to ride in the back of the truck with me. you see, i am happiest riding home in the back of a truck after the gamecocks win. ammie screamed the whole time and i laughed hysterically. she kept saying her dad would kill her and i kept reminding her that it's legal to ride in the back in sc :) once we got back to nicole & charlee's new {and awesome!} house, we made the brilliant decision to go swimming in their new pool after 12 hours of drinking. needless to say, we slept well!

{you're a trooper, ams}

cheers to football season & go gamecocks!