Today was a pretty great day in the Ciche household. I started off the day chaperoning the twins' very first field trip of their school career. Ryan took a half a day today and worked from home in the afternoon so he could spend the morning with Charlie & Kay. He even made potato soup in the crock pot and it was DELICIOUS :). The boys went on a field trip to the apple orchard today. There are 18 kids in his class and 9 adults opted to chaperone. So far, it seems like a pretty good group of kids and parents. It was so neat to see them in their element with their friends. There's a sweet little neighbor girl who's in their class and she and the boys love to hang out. She told her mom and dad that Matt & Jake are her boyfriends haha. She's a total sweetheart and it really makes me nostalgic for when we were little and my younger brother's best friend was our neighbor girl, Hope. They did everything together so when I see the boys with Avery, that's what I think of and how great it will be that they can hang out and live so close to each other. But I digress. The tour was pretty great. When we first hopped on the bus, Jake rushed to the back with three of his friends and Matt & I sat up front behind the bus driver. Matt & Jake both have many friends in the class but it's always interesting to see how they socialize. Jake is usually a little more outgoing with other kids. I did enjoy experiencing Matt's first bus ride with him. The tour actually was quite educational. I even learned that the queen bee lives on average 3 years or more if she's healthy, worker bees live to be about 3 months old and the daddy bee lives about 3 days (as the woman said, he comes back from the honeymoon and his wings and head get torn off). Talk about only serving one purpose in life! After that, we learned about Johnny Appleseed and then the kids all got to pick some apples. It was so neat to see all the kids working together and showing off their bags of apples. Each kid wanted to prove themselves and carry their own bag of apples too, even when it looked pretty heavy. On the bus ride home, I thought I'd sit with Matt & Jake but when I said this to them they were less than thrilled. "Oh mom, why??" So I finally agreed to let Matt & Jake sit with Avery and I'd sit either in front or behind them. Once we got on the bus, they saw Eli and of course, had to sit with him. So Jake and Avery hopped in with Eli, Matt sat right behind them with Eli's dad and I sat behind him with another kid (who I'm sure was thrilled that I was joining him, haha). It's just so strange to see these other kids fill their lives and their interest. It's really bittersweet.
After the field trip, I headed home to Kayla and Charlie. I'm still not used to traveling without any kids, so I opened the side van door, only to realize that I was traveling alone and probably looked like an idiot. I hopped in, headed home and went for a walk with Charlie & Kayla. Ryan said he had fun with the younger ones building with blocks and reading books while we were gone. I'm so thankful that Ryan works for such a wonderful company that has this kind of flexibility. After our walk, we had some lunch and watched a movie (a princess one, of course) while Charlie napped. Then, it was time to get the boys from school. On gorgeous days we love to take advantage and walk down to get them. It was super nice today because this was the first day ever that Ryan was able to join us for the pickup. It was a very relaxing walk (especially since I had a husband to push the stroller for me :)). I think the boys were excited to see Daddy there to help pick them up. I always love seeing their faces as they run out towards us and are talking a mile a minute to tell us about their day. A couple of days ago, the boys came running out saying "Miss Buckles was sick today"--"Yeah, she had to wear her glasses today because she said it makes her feel better"--"She had to take a nap at lunchtime!!" I just laughed. I know how it is to take care of 4 kids when feeling sick, I can't imagine taking care of 18!! Oh yes, and one of them is a foreigner....another story for another time but basically, the child only speaks Chinese. The mother is the only one in the family who speaks any English and it's only a little and they came into the school sometime last week.....at any rate, they got to tell us all about their day and how they had fun in gym class. They love Mr. Huber and love playing the "train game". Still not sure what that is. But it sounds like follow the leader. McKenna got to join us on our walk home since her family got home late from their doctor appointment and I said I'd be happy to walk her home. Once I walked her home and I got back to our house we had to prep for soccer.
Wednesdays are game nights so we typically try to have something planned for dinner immediately after the game. We provide a snack for the kiddos beforehand, then the boys get a snack right after the game but they're pretty hungry by the time we get home. That's where the slowcooker meal was SO nice. Charlie & Kay received snacks during the game which kept them pretty busy. It actually helped while the boys were playing so they weren't screaming the whole time. It was pretty funny because I was right next to another mother of 4, two of which are also 5-year-old twins and in soccer, and her kids were going a little crazy. When they weren't in the game, they were grabbing their chairs and taking them onto the field. The woman with her also had a young child who kept running out onto the field. Finally, the coach of our team had to tell them to get off the field. I must've heard the mom say half a dozen times that she was done and couldn't handle it anymore. They weren't her kids (they were, she was just semi disowning them ;)).
Aside from having the distractions on the sidelines, the game went rather well. Jake even scored two goals! The boys seemed so much more focused tonight and more aggressive at approaching the ball. I was so proud of them. They even did a much better job of paying attention to the coach and the ball instead of just doing windmills on the field :). Even Matt had some good runs and seemed like he had his head in the game. It's only been 3 weeks but they have really improved and I couldn't be prouder. I did have to run Kay to the bathroom way on the other side of the field past the parking lot towards the end, so I didn't get to see everything but again, I couldn't be more proud of them. And I love seeing Ryan be assistant coach to the kids. He's pretty much babysitting them on the sidelines but it's so great to witness all around. It'll be interesting to see how the rest of the season goes and how much their skills will evolve.
How fun. Great recounting of a beautiful day.
ReplyDelete