An I wish I had a camera with me sort of day.

We had such a full busy day today and I found myself wishing I had my camera with me multiple times.  So, I guess the next best thing is to write it all down and hope my memory will be able to remember it all. 

I was asked to be a driver for Anna's field trip to the Helen Schular Nature Center this morning and I was told it was OK to bring Gideon and Sarah with me.  I love hearing the surprise in the voices of people when they hear how many kids I can take in my van!!  So I loaded up all the kids and took them to school and then loaded up a van full of Anna's classmates and made the drive to the nature centre.  As expected, Gideon didn't want to sit on a mat and listen to the group leader discuss animals during the winter, so I spent that time with him out in their display area.  They have a crow that lives in the nature center that they rescued as a baby.  It had fallen out of her nest and broken her leg and once it was healed, she had become so accustomed to being around humans, she never would have survived out in the wild.  She gets to wander around the center during the mornings and then goes into a large cage when there are people around.  This morning, though, Gideon got to get up close and personal with her and even got to pet this bird -- it was really cute.  We were able to see a little cottontail bunny and lots of birds feeding at the bird feeders outside through the windows too.  The kids from the group all went outside for a while too, looking for deer trails and evidence of animals eating the bark from the trees and playing animal guessing games with their teacher. 

The thing that surprised me this morning was Sarah.  She spent the whole 2 hours we were there with the group of kids!  Two girls from Anna's class thought Sarah was the cutest little girl and held her hands and sat with her all morning.  The amazing thing was that Sarah sat still, listened and was quiet -- ALL MORNING!! 

We headed back around lunch time and then Sarah and Gideon had a little lunch and a half an hour of downtime with Dora before it was time for Sarah to head to pre-school.  I knew Gideon was tired because of the busy morning and all the running around he did outside, but I really needed groceries, so I headed to the store as soon as we had dropped off Sarah.  We were hardly 2 minutes down the road before he was fast asleep, but I figured I would let him have a little catnap while I filled up the van with gas and hoped that he wouldn't be too much of a bear when we had to go in for groceries.  I got to the store and he was fast asleep, so I pulled him out of his chair and laid him down in the bottom of the cart with my grocery bags for a pillow.  This poor little boy must have been absolutely exhausted because he slept the entire time!  I had $160 worth of groceries piled all around and under him and he didn't even flinch.  In fact, he slept through me putting him back into the van and all the way home too!!  It was kind of funny all the comments I got and was definitely worthy of a picture! 

We had a nice afternoon/evening too.  The kids were all in somewhat of a good mood, supper was a super easy BBQ hot dogs and we had everything made, eaten and cleaned up by 6:10pm.  It was so nice to have some time to just relax and enjoy the evening without rushing to be somewhere as soon as supper is done.  Definitely a day to remember -- whether I had a camera with me or not!