Cars go VROOM!

Formula 1 is the sport that is on my calendar. Most people are football, baseball, basketball, or soccer people. I am a Formula 1 fan. I love the races, the tracks on the circuit and their history, and the drivers past and present. Growing up with a father who spent his weekends at the track in Ennis, I fell in love with the sounds and smells of speed.

With that love for speed, it was no surprise that I immediately took to racing once I was old enough to drive. My father took my sister and I to racing schools as a way to bond and develop our driving skills. Some of my favorite vacations growing up were spent at a race track. My favorite was a Skip Barber class at Laguna Seca - seeing the infamous Corkscrew turn in person and driving it in an open wheel car is currently one of my favorite experiences I've had behind the wheel because it was the closest I have come to anything like Formula 1.

When I had Emma, I wanted to share my love for the sport with her. When she was young, I would watch races with her and give her play by plays as the race was on. She was much more interested in listening to me talk than watching the cars on TV. But once she started talking and learned the word "car," I taught her that cars went VROOM just like cows going MOO. As she got older and became more curious, she started to pay more attention to the races when they were on the TV and it became a time for us to snuggle and talk.

Last year, for the inaugural race at Circuit of the Americas in Austin, I took Emma with me when my family went to see the race. She never went to the track as I didn't feel it would be something she would enjoy with the loud noises and fast cars moving that could be hard to keep up with. But after a year of incredible progress, I felt she was showing increased interest when the races were on television as well as a fair amount of improvement to her vision since her surgery.

So this year, I decided to let Emma try to see if she liked Formula 1 live. We had a set of head phones for her that we tried out prior to arriving to the track to make sure she would be comfortable wearing them for protecting her hearing. She was slightly confused by them but didn't try to take them off so now it was just a matter of how she would handle the noise. We got up Friday morning and made our way to the track for practice. We got to our seats and she sat in my lap looking around singing her songs and quizzing me on the different parts of my face like she tends to do right now.

Waiting for the cars to start.

As soon as we could hear the cars leaving the pits, the head phones went on and we waited for the cars to make their way around to turn twelve where we were seated. Once she heard the cars, she started to look around for what I can only assume was the TV as she knew that's where the cars normally were. It was hard to explain to her that we were there, but she figured it out as soon as she saw them after they had made a couple laps. But once she saw them, she started getting really excited and got the biggest smile. Lucky for me, she did it for a while so I have some great pictures of it.

Munchkin and Mommy both happy to see cars go VROOM!

While I will say that I really enjoyed the entire weekend and being able to attend the race again this year, my favorite moment of the entire trip was that smile. I loved seeing her face light up and her wiggle in excitement. She turned to me a few times and said something, but of course I could not hear her over the noise of the cars so I'm not sure exactly what she said. My guess was a high pitched squeal like she does when she is really excited. But it doesn't really matter to me that I couldn't hear her because a picture says a thousand words, and her message was clear.