I cannot say enough how much I absolutely love being able to go on field trips with my kids. My mom never got a chance to do that (not that I think it was an option, but if it were, she couldn't do it) so for me to have the option is one of my favorite things!
So when Lucy's teacher sent an email saying they were planning a field trip to the aquarium and asked if anyone would come along to chaperone, I immediately responded (just in case she went with "first come, first serve" choosing method) and told Lucy I was going to try and come along, which made her excited.
Today, she loved when I went to drop them off, but walked to the play area with her and stayed with her. Going into the class, I was happy I got a group of girls (girls tend to be easier) and one of the girls had a mom and older sister who came with so I kind of had a backup chaperone with my group. This ended up being nice, because it turned out one of the girls was a bit of a wanderer and kept walking off, so she made it harder to keep track of all of them.
The bus ride over was funny, a lot of the kids were nervous since it was their first bus ride and they weren't sure how to feel about no seat belts (it's kind of nice to see so many parents push safety in cars on their kids). One boy, sitting behind me, kept yelling out "oh shoot" when we first started leaving, haha. And one of the girls in my group asked that I send a picture of her on the bus to her mom (turns out the girl asked how the mom would know if she was safe on the bus and the mom told her if she needed she could have her adult send a picture of her). It was sweet when everyone started singing "The Wheels on the Bus" so loud and then at one point I heard a good amount of them singing "Golden," haha.
One thing that made me nervous was when one of the other chaperone's mentioned her son was just out the day before with strep and there were A LOT of wet coughs all over the bus (including one girl who was obsessed with Lucy and kept grabbing her hand and wrapping herself around Lucy so I figure we're for sure bringing something home!)
This trip to the aquarium (because you may recall, I previously did an aquarium field trip with Cara last year) was a bit more chaotic. Instead of us just eating lunch whenever, they had a set time. Most of the kids are used to a morning snack that they didn't get this time, so the kids were all very hungry and didn't love having to wait. Luckily, we were able to distract them enough to last until the lunch time (we were able to cross off 3 areas before lunch). After eating it got crazy. There was another field trip there and their lunch was right after ours, but we couldn't leave the lunch area without a worker walking us to the building and so we had to all wait in one area while the other group went to their lunch and then a worker could escort us over, but it got SUPER messy (even the employees seemed stressed out). BUT after all that, we got to go back to finish our last two areas.
The last two areas were really exciting for the kids because they kept asking where the sting rays were and so we hit that right before the sharks (which is my favorite part). I think seeing the rays was the favorite part of all the kids, even though they couldn't really reach them, haha. Another mom of one of my kids showed up right before we left so that was nice for her (also gave me the idea I could always use PTO and show up at the field trip spot on my own in the future if I didn't want to chaperone or if I wanted to bring other kids with me). I'm glad I got to go and be with Lucy (I hope she liked it, but I was quite distracted).
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The bus ride home was a bit more calm, I sat with one of the quieter girls in my group and her and I played A LOT of Rock, Paper, Scissors (to a point where I forgot what my options were, the words weren't fully making sense anymore haha). I was bummed I couldn't check Lucy out of school at that point, but the teacher mentioned they were going to go do computers so I figured she should stay. Luckily, she seemed excited about that so she wasn't too bummed out to stay.
I still look forward to more of these in the future! I think Lucy might have another one this year, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to go with on that, I only plan enough PTO to go on one field trip per kid, so we'll see if that happens or not. (Now that Gwen has had her field trip, I just saved enough for Cara, if she has one this year).
