The Caiprinha Bowl

Since LL has been spending the last four NYE's or so with her sister and brother-in-law and I've spent the last two with them, I decided it was time to start another tradition. And what is better to start traditions around than family? Not much, but I'll take my chances with football! So how to work football into the weekend? Well, I thought it would be fun to list out a bunch of bowl games, with point spreads, and the Bears game, and have everyone pick the winners against the spread.

But the winner should get more than bragging rights......what though? Some sort of obnoxious trophy! Yeah, that's the ticket! So when LL and her sis went shopping, I asked them to send me some pictures of possible trophies. They did and there were some good ones: a giraffe, a green glass owl, and some other crazy stuff. I didn't respond in time though so they didn't pick anything up.

The next day Greg and I were going shopping for ribs and some other ingredients for dinner (as well as more limes!), so we headed over to Safeway and Marshall's to find something. We found a big pink pig bank (really big and fuzzy), a moose puppet and some other good options. However we settled on this baby:

Pretty sweet huh? It's actually a candle holder. We wanted something bowl-like to commemorate the bowl games going on over the holiday. Unfortunately I've been banned from drinking from it due to the possibly toxic interior. Such is the life of being married to a nurse!

Anyway, we all made our picks and after day one it was hotly contested. I decided to change one of my games for day two, which I promptly lost. Ugh. Going into the second to last game of the weekend, that was the only game I had lost! The Stanford/Oklahoma St. game stood between me and a 9-1 record.

I had OSU and was giving 4 points, which seemed like a losing bet as Stanford pushed the game into overtime. Somehow I would need OSU to score a TD without Stanford scoring or some similar combination resulting in a four point win. Just to get to OT I needed the Stanford kicker to miss a short field goal, which he did. Stanford started with the ball in OT and the kicker missed ANOTHER field goal! When OSU had the ball they completed a pass over the middle to a wide open receiver who dove into the endzone for a touchdown to win by six and I was 9-1!!!! Awesome!! The players stormed the field. Fans came on the field. It was mayhem. Then the referees decided to review the play and called him down at the half yard line! Ugh!! After clearing everyone from the field, there was still a chance if they tried to run it in, but noooooo, they just moved the ball to the middle of the field to set up for a field goal. Arrrrrggghhhh! So I ended up 8-2 against the spread with my only two losses being a game I changed and the crazy ending to the OSU game.

As it turns out, my competition went all 5-5 so I ran away with it! So yes, that's my mantle upon which The Caipirinha Bowl trophy sits!! Sweet!