Field Trip Fun

This past week was the week for field trips.  I am embracing my role as a driving mother this year.  It seems like the teachers are struggling to find drivers or moms able to spend the day with the class.  Live if just so busy for everyone.  I find it is good as it helps me get to know other mothers and most importantly I love hanging out and getting to know the kids.  I enjoy this but also find it a bit frustrating and exhausting at the same point. I will leave the whole parenting issue for some other day.  All I can say is that our kids are SUPER smart and they watch and figure out what makes us parents tick-good and bad.
    So James was up first...another trip to the pumpkin patch, I would hopefully say our last but my guess is that we will be back at some point.  He had a lot of fun feeding the animals.  There were so many babies-goats, pigs, lama's, camels, cows, bunnies.  James didn't want anything to do with the camels.  We had a wagon ride-complete with singing and ended the day with a picnic at the park.  It is a lot of standing around watching the kids, I don't know why this is so tiring for me but it is!

 I think this was a first that we didn't need coats or have to worry about mud at the pumpkin patch.  James teacher told the kids to wear long pants but by the end of the day they were all sweating-awesome field trip weather!

The next day it was Andrea's turn to visit the pumpkin patch.  This will be her last year for this and it seems like she is older than she really is.  We visited a local church that was selling pumpkins for missions.  The kids had fun picking out pumpkins to decorate and then listening to a story.  Then we headed out to a family's house for the rest of the day, a fall picnic/party for the class.  Thankfully there are always some moms who love this type of stuff-or planning I should say and they do an awesome job.  The kids had crafts, games, fishing, smore roasting and plenty time to just play.  It was a fun afternoon.

Finally it was Brayden's turn-Becca didn't have any field trips which was a good thing as being out of the house for most of the day makes it pretty hard to get anything done in regards to laundry and food.  For Brayden's field trip we were exploring some different companies and how they are run or what they do.  This is all in preparation for a day at Biz Town and mock town that the kids will have to run.  They all have different jobs for different companies that they have all applied for.  Brayden's group headed out to visit Linde (design and build processing plants for oil and gas) and then St John's.  It was a full day of learning-very full, I think our kids needed an hour to run off some steam!  It was very interesting and we learned a bunch.  Once again most fun was watching and talking with the kids.  This is such a fun age and the conversions can be so silly and then serious at the same time.

 Hard hats, glasses and ear plugs was the highlight for most...although we found the hats gave us a headache pretty fast.

 Amazing to see what they make from sheets of metal-the plants are pretty intricate.

 The highlight of this visit was a special lesson on liquid Nitrogen.  A retired guy from the plant came and did a great demonstration for the kids.  The amount of knowledge these guys have was amazing.

St Johns tour was a lesson on the DeVinci robot.  It really interesting and the kids loved trying it out.  They all were given a score when they were finished with there stimulation...of course it turned into one big competition.

It was a full/fun week but when Friday rolled around we were all ready for a break!  I am so thankful for the kids teachers and people willing to donate their time help these kids grow and understand the world around them!