Field Trips!

It's been a busy end of the week! Gigi and Sara are on a "field trip" to USC for the Special Olympics Summer Games, and Sara is taking pleasure in sending me disgusting pictures of Tommy Trojan and the USC Marching Band. Gigi enjoyed getting a voicemail last night that ended with Ellie sobbing because "WHY ISN'T GIGI TALKING TO ME?!"

But in the meanwhile, we've had other fun. Thursday Ellie's class went on a field trip to the Long Beach Aquarium. The thing with kids that little (3-5 years old) is that they can't really ride on a bus, so a bunch of parents agree to chaperon and the parents who aren't going help by installing their car seats in another parent's car. Since I couldn't dump Adam off with Gigi, I ended up just taking both my kids, which meant I was about zero percent help in actually monitoring the other kids. Thankfully, there were a lot of parents and grandparents in attendance, because Adam fell asleep on the drive up and woke up sour and grumpy, so I had 20 pounds of him strapped to me in the ergo, whining (he screamed when I tried to put him in the stroller.) And of course, Ellie is a handful in and of herself, not to mention just the logistics of herding 20 preschools around a facility that's FULL of field trips during the morning. Still, we had a nice time. We started off in a class room, learning about some of the marine life, and getting to use a smaller touch pool. Ellie said she was scared, but she did touch a sea star. The rest of the morning was just sort of herding the kids and looking at all the animals. Ellie loved seeing the sea horses and the otters. It's hard with such a big group of little kids to really stop and do much teaching, but they just did a unit on the ocean in class, so hopefully it was more fun for them to just see everything in action. My poor kids were totally pooped by the time we finished lunch and got in the car, and extra pooped when I had to wake them both up to take Ellie's swim lesson.

Not interested in doing any touching

Watching the seals

Friday we had lunch with our girlfriends, and then dinner at home, just playing around with Tim (who had been working late on Thursday night.)

And yesterday, a field trip for the grown ups! For Christmas, we discussed with Jake, Dawn, Don and Eileen that maybe instead of exchanging presents or gift cards, we could all just go DO something, and arrived on the idea of going wine tasting during the spring, before it got too hot (but after Adam got big enough to leave.) Since Gigi was out of town, we asked our friend Erlynne to stay with the kids, and she did an amazing job (I was a bit of a nervous Nellie about it, since you know, kids can be tough if you're not their parent.) And then the adults met at Don and Eileen's to hop in our limo and head out to Temecula. I highly recommend it as the only way to travel. We drank a little, we ate a little, we arrived relaxed and ready for our lunch and wine tasting.

(you guys, I'm not really that short, am I?)

Here's a picture of my sparkling sweet flight. You know, because if I'm going to get drunk, I want to make sure I have the gnarliest hangover possible. Highly recommend the pomegranate sparkling though.

We had a nice lunch on the patio, did our tasting at the table and learned NOTHING about wine (except that it is tasty.) There was live music playing and Tim and I got up and danced for awhile, and it was a lovely way to spend a few hours of family time. From there, we went over to a brewery for some beer times, which Don and Eileen survived like champs - Eileen drank more beer than I did! (I prefer Miller Lite, and I have no shame about that fact.)

Tim's flight, my favorite was #3

And then a relaxing limo ride home, and back to our house, where Erl reported great success with the kiddos. She is a doll. We briefly went over to say hey to Grizz, and then I fell asleep on the couch by 9 and Tim offered to carry me to bed when I didn't want to get up and walk by myself.