3 June 2016:

Field Trip! My favorite day of the week, it requires a bit more planning, but I love going to new places and I especially love seeing how much the girls enjoy going out and about as well.

First things first: chores. They only had to brush their teeth and make their beds. I then gave them some direction on what to pack for lunch.

Me: Pack a fruit
Girls: *hemmed and hawed over apples or strawberries*
Me: *while waiting for them to decide, looks in fridge and sees juice boxes (Score!) and plops them in the lunch box*
Girls: *chose apples and packed one in for me as well*
Me: Grab some chips or crackers or something along those lines
Girls: *grabbed both animal crackers and puffed cheetos*
Me: *decided it wasn't worth fighting and let them pack both, because, hey, field trip*
Me: Okay, you two can grab a treat for later.
Girls: Yayyyy!
A.: Can I have a cookie?
Me: Yes
M.: Can I have some starbursts?
Me: Sure
Girls: *Hurriedly put them in the bag while I grabbed myself a little package of skittles*
Me: Now, what sandwiches do you want?
A.: PB&J
M.: Turkey and cheese
Me: Alright, you want me to help you or you got it?
Girls in unison: I got it.
Me: K *makes my own PB&J and sees girls start to put unpackaged sandwiches in lunch box and stops said potential catastrophe; Ziploc bags were doled out*

While I grabbed some ice packs, I had the girls fill up their water bottles and grab their activity bags and any supplies they wanted to bring. M. packed a Taylor Swift book and A. brought a plethora of books along with her own little purse. I'm not sure what the contents were, but since she was happy, I was happy. We strapped in their car seats, got settled in and were off.

Our destination:
 

I hadn't been there in years. I didn't manage to get any photos of the inside of the building because we were all too interested in looking at the animals. This place is basically a small zoo, filled with a lot of Kansas wildlife and also inhabited by some animals that are a long way from home. The later included such things as a "small" four foot caiman, a red tailed boa, and a couple of parrots, among others.

The girls and I were having a pretty quiet look around the place until another group of kids came in. It was a class of middle schoolers on their own field trip. Now, I'm a kid at heart (sometimes, but sometimes I feel like my spirit is trapped in a slightly younger body than it should be inhabiting, but hey, I'll take the few extra years of youth), but I never really fit in with the kids who were my same age when I was much younger. I was quiet and reserved while my peers were much more extraverted than I could ever hope to be. They liked to talk to one another; a lot of talking from a lot of people equates to a lot of noise. At this time A. and M. and I decided it would be best to go outside and eat lunch:


We were not alone for long... about ten minutes into our picnic the students came rushing out to eat  right by us. Paradise was lost, but one of the teachers pointed out how well M. and A. were behaving and told the other kids to follow in their example. Sadly, they didn't, however I love complements so I felt pacified. But the complements didn't stop there; I decided that I didn't want to eat all of my Skittles so I split the little bag into thirds and gave the girls their shares to which A. said I was one of the nicest baby sitters they've ever had, and M. promptly agreed. This is a huge benefit of helping raise kids or simply raising kids, they can make you feel like a superhero when they are the really awesome ones.

After lunch we applied some sun screen and bug repellant and went on a walk around the park:


I had the girls "scavenger hunt"; M. has really sensitive skin and I'm not great at identifying poisonous leaves so I just had them point out things that they found rather then pick them up. (No one got sunburnt or bitten by bugs or even itchy! I'd call that a success!) After a while the girls wanted to count snails, we found 3.
 

Sadly, the shady path ended and the short walk turned into 1 3/4 miles long! The girls were tired, yet they still wanted to climb up rocks, but I decided that rather than have them take over a "boulder" that another little kid was crawling up (they'd climbed this same rock about 10 times before lunch) that I would take them someplace new.

I took them to Sunflower Outdoor and Bike Shop on Mass:


A. really liked the kayaks.

After a while I decided it was time to head home, but I needed to grab some blueberries for muffins I make for the Lawrence Farmer's Market. The girls helped me search the isles:


We found them, dropped them off at my house and then went back to theirs. For the remainder of the afternoon we read "Hoot" and then had a meeting and discussed what we'd like to do next week.

Then I was off. I baked my goodies for the Market and told Zach I had some crafts I wanted to do with him:


(Paintings #3, & Luminaries #2 under Crafts).
We both thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. And while I was washing my face, Zach surprised me and lit all of the candles we had in our room. I had never witnessed this before and it was absolutely beautiful! I was so relaxed and so calm and Zach let me get under the covers before he blew them all out. I quickly and peacefully drifted off to sleep. Well done, Zach, well done.