Summer Shootout

As I've mentioned before, we live in a racing town, and I guess it's to be expected when the Charlotte Motor Speedway is only a couple miles down the road, but even when NASCAR isn't going on, the speedway still hosts tons of other racing events.  On Monday and Tuesday nights during the summer there is a special series going on called the Summer Shootout, and this Tuesday night Austin and I had a date!!

Ryan had been out of town for awhile so Grandma Jo Ann came up to keep us company for a few days and kept Owen while Austin and I went out for our mommy-son evening at the track.  It was HOT, but it was FUN!!

Austin so excited to walk through those gates!!

Standing on the track with his new Monster Truck toy!

Since Austin is all about Monster Trucks these days we of course had to go on Monster Truck day.  He got a free toy for being one of the first kids through the gate and they even had Monster Truck rides!!  He was a little intimidated by the size of the actual truck but we climbed on board still really excited about our upcoming ride.

Strapped in and ready to ride!

I strapped Austin in tight but in all my worrying about him, I forgot to put on my own seat belt!  I didn't think it would matter until I almost ended up on the floor as soon as the thing started moving.  I clutched the seat in front of me with my left hand and held onto Austin with my right.  It was wild and very loud!  I think I had a nervous laugh going on the entire time and Austin had a blank stare on his face and didn't make a single noise. When we finally went to get off he said to me, "That was scary!"  I asked if he wanted to ride again and he quickly responded, "NO!"  We sat there for about 30 more minutes and just watched as other people rode and took some pictures.

There was a car parked near by and every time the truck would start going again Austin would ask me when it was going to jump over that car.  Apparently he is not nearly as fascinated with Monster Trucks when they are just driving around...he needs to see them crush cars and fly through the air.

After saying goodbye to the Monster Truck, we took a golf cart shuttle back to the main track where the preliminary races were taking place.  Austin loved the golf cart ride more than his ride in the Monster Truck...who would have guessed?  We made it back just in time to watch the 8-11 year old qualifiers.  Yes, that's right, 8-11 year old kids were driving miniature versions of race cars out on the track.  It was wild!  These kids aren't even old enough drive a car or get a license but here they were driving on a NASCAR track...better than most adults!  We even witnessed a small crash and I almost started to get a little emotional just knowing that there was a young kid in that car.  He handled it like a pro and Austin couldn't stop talking about the crash and the tow truck that had to come tow the car off the track.

The crash 

The little boy on the big screen was the driver of the car above that crashed.

Austin cooling off and watching the races!

After qualifiers were over, the big races started and it began it get really loud once those cars started going all out.  I couldn't believe the difference in noise from the qualifiers to the actual races...and this is what Austin thought about that...

Next time we'll remember our earplugs!!