Go Wings Go!!!!!

Hi Everyone,

Earl, Darby and I had a great weekend in Minneapolis/St Paul,,,,shopping and hockey,,,What else is there to life!

We left on Thursday, arriving in Albertville around 2:30, checked into our hotel and then headed to our favorite outlet mall. We shopped and shopped getting lots of great deals. The deal of the weekend for Earl was buying 2 NHL jerseys at the Mall of America for $32 US (total that is) and for Darby CROCS fir $2.99 a pair. Darby broke an all time record by buying 10 pairs of shoes!!!!!
We had a great dinner at a Thai restaurant, watched some TV and then crashed for the night.

The next morning we woke up had breaky and then headed back to the Mall to finish up. We stopped at our favorite hamburger place "Culvers" and headed into to St Paul. We checked in and then....guess what!....we went to the Mall of America, where we shopped and had dinner at Bubba Gump Shrimp.

Saturday morning we headed to the Xcel Energy Center for the Detroit Red Wings/Minnesota Wild morning skate. We had a difficult time finding our way into the arena until Andreas Lilja (who wears # 3) saw us and walked with us down to the dressing room. How cool is that! Once we arrived Earl was in his Happy Place surrounded by his favorite coaches and players. Darby and Earl were certainly made to feel at home and just visited and hung out with the guys. We had taken some pictures when we were in Detroit in November and had them blown up, so Darby and Earl had fun getting the guys to autograph them all. We hung out for quite a while and if you ask the boys I am sure they will have some stories to share with you. Earl wore his prosthetic to show everyone and was walking around without his crutches.....smiling broadly.

After we had lunch at the White Castle, we headed back to the MOA and finished some shopping, then back to the hotel where Earl had a little rest before the game.

We were at the arena by 6 and watched our team unfortunetly loose to the Wild. (5-2) But we congratulate Tomáš Kopecký, on the birth of his baby and on scoring a goal. What a way to celebrate the birth of your baby on the same day. After the game we ventured or should I say adventured our way down to the dressing room. There were quite a few Detroit fans, so we were thankful that we had our "Special Access Passes", but still had a bit of a struggle getting past security until Jiri Hudler (#26) helped get us through. We had a nice visit with Jiri, Chris Draper and Steve Yzermann, before heading into the dressing room. We hung out again and then said our goodbyes....funny we were almost the last to leave the dressing room.

Once again a very big thank-you to Mike Babcock and the Detroit Red Wings for making yet another dream come true!!!!! I will post some pictures, in a bit.

Earl heads into hospital tomorrow morning for surgery at 10:30...so please think of him and keep him in your Prayers.

Debbie