A two adventure day.

Too many heavy and over-thoughtful posts lately. On the lighter side of things, I thought I'd share our two adventure day with you.

Emma had her very first field-trip this morning -- and I got to go with her! Her preschool class went to HOME DEPOT. When we first got there, the kids were each given a bright orange apron with their name written on it. Then, we took a guided tour of the store. They even gave us a map of the store to look at. Emma didn't think it was cool until I started singing the Dora song "It's the map, it's the map, it's the map....." (you know) then I think she was pretty well convinced, until we hit the paint department where they gave each of the kids a wooden paint stirring stick. Emma immediately tried to start sword fighting with hers. (Or should I say "light saber" fighting--thanks to Aiden) The store itself was not a thrill for her, as she's been drug there on many an outing. But she liked the gardening activity at the end.

Later, after Aiden came home from school, we loaded up the bike trailer and headed down the street. I had promised Aiden a picnic with bologna & cheese sandwiches and mayonnaise on them. We went to a park a few blocks away that has ducks to feed, a playground, and a pond with real fish in it. We had never been there before, but happened upon it once while driving.

I had visions of a lovely lunch, followed by the children joyfully feeding the ducks and me taking some lovely pictures of my kids in a beautiful park full of nature and wonder.....not so. Aiden was too excited to feed the ducks to sit and eat his own lunch-he kept trying to feed it to the ducks instead of our old moldy bread. Emma only wanted the Cheetos. And for some reason, the ducks didn't want to eat anything we threw to them anyway. Aiden chased them around while hurling chunks of bread at their tail feathers. Though I must say the seagulls had a healthy appetite. I tried to take some pictures, but I decided that I would probably do a better job at it if I didn't have to worry about the safety and social behavior of my subjects. There were fishermen all around, and I've been in the Fitch family long enough to know that you just don't disturb a man while he's fishing. Not to mention that there was so much duck poop around that I didn't really want to set Emma down for fear that she might scoot through some.

Don't get me wrong. It was still fun. The kids loved it, and didn't want to go home. It's just one of those Mom things. You naively get this blissful idea of how something should be, then when reality laughs in your face--all you can do is laugh back and say to yourself "What was I thinking? Of course it would really be like this. I should have known."