Bound to Get a Good One

At the end of October, I went on a field trip with Mads to the Great Wall.  That's cool, huh.  I think my 2nd grade field trip was to a botanical garden.  In Arizona!  It was basically like walking around on a dirty hill for 2 hours.  Looking at tumbleweeds.  Just kidding, it wasn't that bad.  But we are trying to make sure our kids know how special stuff like this is.  Anyway...

We had a great time.  They gave every 2nd grader on the trip a camera of their own.  Every. Single. One.  You want to know how to make forward progress impossible?  Give approximately 80 7 year olds a camera and tell them to take as many pictures as they want.  They do.  They take many many pictures.  I've seen it.  I've waited.  I even got my picture taken 637 times.  I'm just glad I'm not the one who has to sort through all those things.  Since they were much more enthusiastic about the picture taking at the beginning of the hike than the end, we were able to actually make it to the wall in the allotted time.  That isn't to say that they stopped taking pictures.  No, they were just able to walk a few steps in between shots.  :)

Remember all those stairs we had to take down the last time we went because the slide was closed?  Well, we not only had to take those down this time, but up as well.  It was a work out.  Those grade twoers worked hard.  And the out of shape moms.  Mostly the out of shape moms (me).  Luckily the weather was perfect, and there was hardly any pollution.

The kids read a few books about the Great Wall prior to the field trip.  Mads was especially interested in how there were people buried inside the wall.  Ugh.

Here's Mads and his good friend BK.

Fall.