Cows, Sheep and Kids!

It’s that time of year when the kids get to go on field trips and of course, what mom doesn’t love to go along for the fun? It’s one of the things that I love the most! Unfortunately, the weather wasn’t informed that it was supposed to be nice and so it wasn’t! Even though no one likes to go on field trips when it’s raining and miserably cold, I guess it all comes back to that little phrase that all kids know very well, “you get what you get and you don’t throw a fit”! Fortunately, we mostly got the “cold” part for both field trips although we did get some rain at Hayden’s...but it only came when the kids were ready to eat their lunch, so we just moved into a big barn. It may not have been an ideal spot for lunch (with dirt floors and no real place to sit down) but it was better than being stuck out in the rain!

For Connor’s field trip we went to the Hamblin Dairy farm in Syracuse, so it wasn’t too far away from the school, which was kind of nice. At the farm, the kids got to learn about cows and all that they can do for us, they learned about how fertilizers can pollute our rain water, they got to make a wheat necklace, they got to see where and how the cows get milked, they got to pet some baby farm animals and they got to see a sheep get sheared. It was fun to see all of it, but it was sure cold! Fortunately, after days and days of rain, we finally had a dry day, and it was even sunny, but the wind was blowing so it was definitely cold! The field trip only lasted about an hour, so despite the cold, we figured we could handle anything for that long, especially if we got to be with our kids...right? I had to keep reminding myself of that fact, but it worked!

The baby animal petting part

Connor with his best friend Austin Harrison at the sheep shearing part

Connor didn't want to get too close to the cows

At Hayden’s field trip a week later, I thought for sure that it would be nice because we’d had a nice week (after Connor’s field trip of course), but we weren’t so lucky. I volunteered to drive my van and take all of the moms along since there were only 4 of us! Surprisingly, all of the rest of the parent volunteers (about 6 or 7 of them) were dads! I only had about ¼ of a tank of gas when we left the school, but we were only going to Antelope Island and that’s only about 5 or 6 miles away from the school so I wasn’t too concerned. What I didn’t know is that once we got to Antelope Island, we had to go all the way to the south end of the island, which was about as far away as it would have been to drive all the way to Salt Lake! The further and further we went, the more I got nervous about running out of gas as I watched the gas needle steadily drop towards EMPTY! We made it to the Garr Ranch, which is where we were going, but I wasn’t sure we’d make it all the way back to the school...unless it was on fumes! I tried not to think about it while the kids were on their field trip though!

Hayden with his group in the sheep shearing barn

The kids started off their field trip by taking a walk around the wetlands while the parents got a quick lesson on the mini classes we were teaching the kids. The class that I got to teach was about spinning wool. They were only at each station for about 10 minutes but there were 9 groups of kids, so it felt like an eternity before we were done, but at least I had the help of another mom so I didn’t have to do it myself! I definitely couldn’t do that every day! The three things that made teaching my class tolerable was first of all the fact that we were doing it for our kids, then second that I got to do it with another mom that I enjoy working with, and last of all, that we got to be inside the barn to do it and that they’d closed the barn door so that we didn’t have to deal with the miserably cold wind that was blowing outside!

Hayden with his best friend Brighton Huggard

Standing out in the rain with the Great Salt Lake in the background

Hayden with his teacher, Miss Andersen

The barn where we did our class and ate our lunch

When the classes were finally over, we got to eat lunch with our kids inside the barn like I mentioned earlier and then I got to stress over my gas situation again! We decided to leave before anyone else did so that if we ran out of gas, at least we’d have someone behind us to stop and help us! Otherwise, we might be stuck out there on the island forever! All the way home we watched the gas gage that showed the miles we had left until we were out of gas as it dropped from 21 miles down to 17 and then continue to drop down until it got to 5 miles…and that’s when I got the most nervous because we had at least 7 or more miles left to go! I finally just switched the gage back over to the temperature because I figured if we were going to run out of gas, it was going to happen whether we were watching it or not and why put ourselves through that stress? We barely made it and I’m sure we were on fumes because the gas gage registered 0 miles when I got to the gas station! At least we made it…and we had a fun time with the kids too!