A long hot weekend in Des Moines

Friday morning we took off for Des Moines to play and for Johann and Simeon to play baseball. The heat index this week was 115-120. The actual temp was upper 90's and the humidity was so high that it felt tropical outside.
Friday we went to the Science Center. There wasn't nearly as much as we thought there would be (especially for the admission price). We made rockets and shot them off in the cage, made an arch with blocks, built with legos in the space room (not sure how they totally fit into that room), the older kids were on the news with the weather guy and we watched some shows. The shows were hits with the kids. The 1st show was all about fire and explosions. She lit different gases on fire, made different colored fires and even lit a $1 bill of dads on fire (but don't worry it only got it wet). At the end of the show she lit bubbles on her hand on fire.
The 2nd show was about different kitchen experiments. She needed 3 helpers during the show and all 3 older kids got to go help. Simeon got to help get a polymer string out of water. Corrine got to pour water into a cup, then the experimenter put the cup upside down overs Corrine's head, but because of gel (like in diapers) the water was absorbed. Ammon got to help with alkaselzer film canister rockets. He took off running to get away from his rocket so fast. The last show was about reptiles and they got to pet them. We met a turtle, snake and skink.








Friday night we went to the hotel where the baseball team was staying. We swam for a while, then Johann and Simeon went to an Iowa Cub baseball game. The other 3 kids, plus a friend and I went to Sams club, McDonald's then came back to the room to play.
Saturday and Sunday were extremely hot days of baseball. We let Simeon play Sunday since it was his last game this season. Over the course of the weekend they played 12+ hours of baseball in the extreme heat. Fortunately none of our boys or boys we played had problems with the heat. We had the same umpires for all 4 games we played (they also umpired the 2 or 3 others games in our age bracket). It was so hot that if an inning went too long, they would call a timeout and have all the kids come in for drinks.
The kids watching the game stayed cool by sitting under the umbrellas playing in the dirt, pouring water on their heads and drinking LOTS of liquids. Rebecca was covered in dirt each day and loved it!













Sunday we played at 8:00, then we were done until noon. When we got back they were giving another team the 1st place trophy's before we had even started our game. Our record was 3-0, so there was no way we could have won the tournament, but the team we were playing could have won. They choose to not play a championship game if they beat us because of the heat. So our game was really just for fun because we already knew our places for the tournament since there were only 3 teams playing. Our game lasted over 3 hours going into over time. In overtime we got our second wind and scored run after run to finally win our very last game of the tournament. It was great to go home with a win after such a long weekend.