MOOSEHEART, IL - Rainy weather may have dampened the grass at Mooseheart on Saturday, July 19 for this year's Wisconsin-Minnesota Day.

But by the end of a somewhat soggy, muggy afternoon, there was nothing that could wash away the smiles on a number of Mooseheart students, who got to make rockets and then watch them blast off.

Wisconsin-Minnesota Day is an annual event, and is a special day when Moose members from the two states travel to the Child City. Once there, the Moose get to see some of the 240 children for whose well-being their Moose membership provides. And they also get to tour the Wisconsin and Minnesota residence homes and later eat lunch with those same children, as well as all the roughly 120 students who are spending their summer at the Child City this year.

The weather held down the crowd from last year's massive turnout from the two states. But the Ohio Pavilion near the House of God was filled to overflowing with Moose and Mooseheart children at mealtime.

After lunch, 20 children got their chance to make rockets, which they subsequently launched.

"It was fun," Mooseheart eighth-grader Heather Zwicky said. "I wasn't sure if I wanted to do this at first, but I did and it was fun. It was pretty awesome to see the rocket go into the air."

The Wisconsin Moose Association and Sheboygan Lodge 438 funded the Mooseheart students' participation in the May 9-10 event. The team built a rocket, went to Sheboygan, met a real astronaut and learned much on rocket building. Rockets for Schools co-chair Carol Lutz is a member of Sheboygan Chapter 2046.

Lutz said it was a dream of hers to get the Mooseheart children involved.

"The kids were really well-behaved," Lutz said. "They participated and built a rocket, and that was a great achievement."

On the second day, the teams got a chance to launch their rocket. Each had to carry a payload, the Mooseheart sent three eggs up 2500 feet and then back to the ground. They had an uncooked egg, and then two in various stages of preparation.

These eggs were placed in a basket made of drinking straws, which more than cushioned the eggs on their landing. The payload container worked.

None of the eggs returned in a messy state.

Zwicky was one of the students in that team.

"It was fun," Zwicky said.

Zwicky said she was nervous as to whether or not her rocket would fly.

"I didn't think that the rocket was going to go up," she said. "I thought it would stay on the launch pad. I had the same feeling here today."

Zwicky's nervousness is natural, said Lutz.

"That's the worry for all of our teams, " Lutz said. "They don't know if it's going to go off and many of them don't think that it's going to go off. But we have them all inspected, and they guys who do that fix them so that they'll all go off."

The Mooseheart students are already planning a return trip to Rockets for Schools in 2009. As Mooseheart successfully launched its rocket this May, the school's teams get to step up to a larger rocket, one that will fly as high as one full mile into the air.

The rockets the students built during Wisconsin-Minnesota Day only flew a couple hundred feet into the air. But the rain stopped before the launches started, all 20 rockets launched and there were plenty of smiles to go around as the projectiles floated back to Earth.