April Fool's

Note to self: Never plan a field trip for April Fool's Day! Planning a field trip on April Fool's day is setting yourself up to be a fool. April 1st my second grade class was scheduled to go on a field trip to the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle. All the early planning was going so smooth; I should have know that something was waiting around the corner. I could take 10 chaperones and I had 17 volunteers. No problem the coordinating teacher told me we will have three buses and plenty of room for all to go. Great! Everyone is happy. Including the mom that wouldn't let her children go if she couldn't go. We might lose them! Of course this same mom paniced on the bus when her child moved to the back with a friend and she couldn't see him. Of course there was no way this child could have gotten off the moving bus. Does that mean that she lost him? Back to the events of the day. We all gathered in my room and took attendence then headed for the buses. Two buses! Did I mention it was snowing!

Yes, big fluffy flakes had started to fall at about 6:00 a.m. and it was 33 degrees. The bus barn had wrote the transportation order for two buses. so we were short lots of space. We called the barn and after aurguing who had made a mistake and old e-mails being sent back and forth they decided we did order three buses and sent one over. Thirty min. late we leave the school in what would normally be a picturesque winter snow storm. We arrive at the zoo and it is also snowing in Seatlle. It is really cold! We start to see the exhibits and we are lucky that the rainforest exhibit and the reptile house our part of our tour and heated. The kids are having a great time. We eat lunch, everyone orders hot chocolate, and then start to gather groups for our 1:00 departure.

All is going well. No one is missing and the busses are loaded. Two of the buses start right up but the third one will not turn over. We try everything. We finally decide to cram as many people on the two working buses as we can and head home. We manage to get all but 16 people on the buses. It is not a comportable ride but at least they are going home. I stay behind with the remaining 16 chaperones and kids. The bus barn sends out a mehanic from Maple Valley to jump the bus. Why don't the buses carry jumper cables? He arrives about an hour and a half later. We are waiting on our cold bus. Then we start the drive home in rush hour traffic. The funny thing is everytime we had to announce that there was a problem all the chaperones thought we were going to say "April Fools". Guess we fooled them.