Early April Shenanigans: Hoedowns And Class Field Trips

I was kept pretty busy in April, and not just from painting our master bedroom. The weather was getting warmer, and the school year was starting to approach its hectic close. Both those things combined to make quite a to-do list.

The first weekend of April always means two things in our home; it's the weekend of our community-wide yard sale...and it's also the weekend of the LDS Church's General Conference, which lasts all weekend and is streamed live over the Internet. As usual, we decided to sample a bit of both. Before General Conference, the kids and I ventured out in the old minivan, cruising the neighborhood for sweet deals. We weren't after any huge items this time around, but the kids (using mostly their own money), came home with some pretty interesting stuff...

The foosball table was a nice little find; the girls and their friends have already played many games on it. The mini-trampoline was a bit more of a stretch, but it has spent a lot of time out of doors and hasn't really bothered anyone, so we're good. The girls' outfits were...a little interesting, to say the least, but they have really enjoyed adding them to their dress-up collection. Celeste really wanted to learn to roller-skate this year, so I suppose starting her out in the "little kid" strap-on skates was a good way to start. (SPOILER ALERT: she spent a day wearing the skates literally everywhere, including walking up and down the stairs with them still strapped on. She quickly grew tired of them for "some reason," and has rarely worn them since.)

Once the shopping was done, we all sat down and tried our best to listen to General Conference. To pass the time, I took turns doing crazy things with each girls' hair:

 

 

 

As you can see, some of the "experiments" worked better than others. Lorelai wanted her hair to look crazy, though, so mission accomplished!

The following weekend was mostly free, except for a short band trip Lorelai took (more on that in a future blog post), and a stake (regional) church activity we decided to attend on Saturday, April 9th. Sometimes, our stake activities are a bit crowded and overwhelming, and we generally don't enjoy them as much as we do the smaller ward activities. But this particular stake activity ended up being a lot of fun, and we had a great time in spite of ourselves (that is, in spite of our grouchy attitudes).

 

The activity was a "hoedown," complete with square dancing, a yummy"breakfast for dinner," and a petting zoo.

 The girls had a wonderful time, and Nathan and I had fun catching up with lots of people. Another likely reason we enjoyed ourselves is that this activity occurred shortly after our ward boundaries were changed. At this point, we still felt unmoored from our comfort zone, and we were missing our friends in our old ward quite a bit. Now, we feel more kindly toward stake activities, as it is one of the only ways we will see some of our old "ward-mates" on a regular basis. It didn't help much that our first day of church in our new ward (the Anamax Ward) was the following day.  It was awkward, uncomfortable, and difficult for all of us. Things have gotten better since, but the hoe-down the day before felt all the more bittersweet in retrospect.

Luckily, the next week was very busy, which helped us get our mind off our worries. It was standardized testing week at our charter school, which meant my two younger girls would be very busy with field trips! Why is that, you ask? Well, standardized tests are required for students in third grade and higher. This meant that only Lorelai would be testing the whole week. Celeste had one day of a "warm-up" standardized test for second-graders (not an official test, but a good representation of what the students will face the following year). As a kindergartner, Aurora didn't take any tests at all! And since our school's campus is so small (and younger students so noisy), it's in the school's best interest to move the younger grades off-campus as much as possible during testing week, so as to create the most tranquil environment possible for the older students.

So where did everyone spend their time? Well, Aurora's busy field trip week started with a trip to nearby Anamax Park (where they played a lot of "field day" games and watched a science presentation). The following day, her class attended the Tucson Children's Museum, followed by a picnic lunch. I wasn't able to go on either of these field trips, but Nathan was able to walk over from work and join our youngest for the lunch. She was thrilled that Daddy paid her a visit!

Celeste spent one day testing, then the next day at Anamax Park. I was able to attend as a chaperone for this event, which featured a ton of fun water games; a "career day," when several professionals came to share information about their jobs (including a border patrol officer, a police officer, and a Marine!); and a visit from the local fire station, complete with fire truck and fire hose!

Celeste has had a permanent substitute teacher for the second half of this school year; it was Lara Smith, the mother of her friend Elise and a friend of our family's. She's a very caring, hardworking, talented woman; I will never figure out how she gets so much stuff done every day. But Lara was the mastermind behind all the "water games," and they were all very clever and fun; the kids loved playing them!

I spent most of my time at the "cup relay race" station; basically, the children were divided into teams, with each team getting a large tub of water, an empty tub, and a cup with a few holes poked into the bottom. Each child would have to scoop a bunch of water into their cup, weave their way through a simple pathway, then dump the remaining water in the cup into the empty tub (before it all leaked out over their heads, of course!). The team who filled up their empty tub first was the winner!

 

 

Everyone enjoyed themselves...and everyone got quite wet indeed.

And they got even more wet once the firemen showed up, and gave everyone a shot at holding the fire hose.

 

 

 

It was chaos...damp, slippery chaos. The best kind, as Celeste and her class would tell you.

The following day was "movie day" for all the younger grades. The school purchased an early showing of Zootopia at the local movie theater. Our girls had already seen it once before (over Spring Break), but they were very excited to see it again. And so was I, truth be told...I thought it was a clever, fun movie with a good moral at its center. On this day, I was a chaperone for Aurora's kindergarten class.

I didn't have to do too much intense work for this field trip; mostly, I sat in the middle of a bunch of kids, made sure they were sitting still, and then holding their hands if there were any scary parts in the movie. It was fun to watch Aurora giggling with her best friend, Shelby, and all her other buddies.

Everyone enjoyed the movie and no one got lost or in trouble; it was a successful trip and marked a satisfying end to the "testing week" field trips I've become used to with our school.

We also had two consecutive game nights with friends that next weekend, with two different friends. Whew! What a busy week. But the third week in April would be the busiest of all, for a variety of reasons I don't have time to write at the moment. But soon...