Baseball, Buddies and a Bag of Chips

Now that fall is supposedly here, (no one told Mother Nature here in the desert), that means the fall baseball season is officially underway.  A couple of weeks ago Gabriel has his first baseball game and we all headed out to support the team.  

We seem to still be in the middle of our monsoon season.  On the Saturday before the first hurricane (the one that brought us the 100 year Phoenix flood I blogged about previously), Michael, Isabelle braved the 100 plus degree temperatures and the 50% plus humidity and sat outside from 11:30-2:45 for Gabriel's noon game.  Now if that doesn't spell LOVE and SUPPORT, I don't know what does.

Simply put, it was miserable.  No not the game, sitting out there watching the game.  Thankfully some wonderful friends, upon hearing our plans for the day, loaned us their pop up tent and said, "Here this will help, please use it!"  and it was wonderful, but still miserable.

I tried to present the idea of a noon game to Isabelle and Michael in a way, that would make them believe it was going to fun!  Michael's too smart and knew immediately I was trying to pull one over on them. "Mom-do we HAVE to go watch Gabriel?" Can't we just stay home?"  Even he's tired of the heat.  Knowing he wasn't going to get the answer he wanted to hear, he thankfully didn't put up too much of a fight when I denied his request.

So off we went.  I set up the tent, pulled out the lawn chairs and set up for a picnic lunch.  I looked around to see our always-in-motion Isabelle, lying on the tent bag on the ground.  YES- She was lying on the ground, with sweat caked on all parts of her body.  For a minute I was thankful, and then I thought, "Should I be alarmed?"  She never sits still, was she overheating?  I gave her some water and opened up the sandwiches. 

Meanwhile the game went on in front of us.  While the two little ones ate their lunch and entertained themselves on the ground, I wondered how long we'd be able to stay and watch the game.  I feared not very long, until I opened up the bag of chips.  

They both went from being horizontal, sharing a tiny portion of the tent bag on the ground, to sitting up right, along the fence, taking turns shoving their hands into the bag.  They'd compare the size of the chip each one of them got and then Isabelle would try to give Michael her smaller chips, so she could stick her hand in the bag again to pull out a larger one.  They played so nicely together, I often found myself watching them more than the actual baseball game.

As they almost devouring the entire bag of BBQ chips themselves, I many times thought about stopping them.  And then I stopped myself.  I told myself, the salt from the chips would be good for them to keep them from getting too dehydrated and I reminded myself how nicely they were sitting, playing together, allowing me a chance to watch the game.  And so, I decided to let them keep on, keeping on.  I picked my battle and this time, I let it all slide by.

And the end result...

It ended up being a fun time.  No not the weather, the weather was still miserable; but everything else was nice.  The younger two had a lot of fun, they sat still in the shade and played nicely with each other.  We were there to support their brother and his team went onto win. And I got to sit and enjoy an entire game.  This hasn't happened in... well, it hasn't EVER happened.

Who knew baseball, buddies, and a bag of chips could make a hot, humid afternoon so much fun!

Until next time,

Angie