Weekend in Kansas City

This weekend Grant’s baseball team played in a tournament in Kansas City.   Jeff was already in northeastern Kansas for work so Grant and I caught a ride up with the Becker family and he met us in KC on Friday afternoon. 

We made Grant pose for a quick shot with both of us before his first game. 

Luckily there was a covered upper level deck area where we could watch the games.  It seemed like a great spot when we arrived but by mid-evening when the sun started to go down we were wishing that we had an east facing field. 

The boys played hard and won their first game (14-7) against the KC Padres.  We celebrated the win with several families for dinner at Cheeseburger in Paradise at the Legends.

This cute little orange/lime frog came in my fruity drink.  I didn’t intend for Grant to suck on it all evening . . . I guess he liked the flavor of my drink cleverly named Euphoria.

Saturday morning we headed back to the ballpark and played at 10:00.  The boys beat the Arkansas Ghost 11-1.  It was the best I have ever seen them play.  Jeff took the good camera so we got tons of great shots of all the kids.    Grant had his own cheering section.  My mom and dad came and brought my grandma.  They had been in KC visiting family so they stopped by the ballpark on the way home to catch a game.

After the game we headed back to the Legends and had lunch at T-Rex.  It felt so good to be inside someplace with air-conditioning and limitless amounts of cold drinks.   We left Jeff in charge of a few of the boys while we ran into the Nike Outlet store after lunch.  They found the fountains and got completely soaked.  It’s a good thing it was a hot day because they dried off really fast.After a few hours of shopping we went back to the hotel to swim and get cleaned up.  They we met up with a  few families and went to a  T-Bones game.  They are a semi-professional team that plays in KC.  It was a beautiful night and we had a great time!!!

The Bumgardner boys both had to have a snow cone.

Coach John had the best seat in the house.They had to of course get it a doofus shot.  This is coach John’s signature look anytime someone does something silly on the field or at bat.

Mid way through the game we found out we had the #2 seed in the tournament and had to play at 8:00 am so we packed up a little early and headed back to the hotel so everyone could get a good nights sleep.

Our winning streak continued a little longer.  The boys beat the Arkansas Rattler’s (8-1).  I ran down to get a picture of Grant playing 3rd base and right as I was about the snap the camera he snagged a ball on the infield and threw it to 1st base to get the final out of the game.  I think the ball is actually in his glove in this shot.

We had a few hours between games.  I thought this was a cute shot of the boys sitting with Carol on the bench sizing up their opponents who were still playing on the field below.

Unfortunately we lost in the semi-finals to the Topeka Renegades.  I think it was more of a case of us beating ourselves.  Our boys made a lot of silly mistakes that ended up costing them the game.  They played hard and probably finished in 3rd place.  We didn’t stick around to find out.  It was so hot and everyone was pretty worn out so we loaded up the car and headed home. 

Thanks for a fun weekend Cardinal’s (and Cardinal’s parents). . . I’m sure we will be doing it again soon.

OMG – How could I forget . . . on Saturday afternoon I got hit in the head by a foul ball from another field.  I have NO idea where it came from and nobody yelled ball.  All of a sudden I was just nailed by a ball from out of no where.  I felt like such a goof because it made me cry.  I think I was kind of in shock.  Luckily nobody caught in on camera (I hope).  I iced it down for a little bit and now just have a BIG lump to show for it.