Today, I went on a field trip with the 4th graders from our school to Tillicum Village at Blake Island. We took a boat trip to the island and had a salmon bake and a Native American Dance show. It was fun but a long day - an hour bus ride to the Pier downtown then a 45 minute boat ride to the island. We barely had any time to explore before it was time to eat and then back to the boat immediately after the show. I am glad that I went though because if not, I am not sure that Jax would have eaten anything. Since I was there, he did eat the salmon, corn and carrots. Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed the dance show and the lore of the Pacific Northwest First Nations people.

This is only the second field trip I have ever been on for the school. I have gone on pumpkin patch field trips for all of the kids while they were in preschool but the only other school trip I have been on was a walking trip to the fire station when Jax was in kindergarten. Usually, I have no one to watch Cars (or Dex and Cars before Dex went to school full-time). But, because of Jax's issues this year, I had Stephen book today off work back around Christmas-time.

I used to feel incredibly guilty that I never went on field trips but today completely changed my attitude. I had a group of 3 boys, including Jax, and the other two were a little out-of-control. They ran off here and there, kept wrestling each other, pawing each other and one even bit the other! They were acting not as I expected 4 graders to act. Anyway, I don't think I could handle having to chaperone another field trip if the kids acted that way. I was thisclose to asking the teacher to separate those two. Since I barely spend any time in Jax's class, I did not know that these two are always acting like that and that they are not allowed to sit near each other anymore. I guess the teacher thought she would reward them and let them be in the same group. Either that or she was punishing me! So, I definitely will think twice about volunteering for field trip chaperoning duties.