for the Mother of the Year award that is. Last Friday I was all geared up to go on this great field trip with the 3rd graders - a hike at Ape Caves, the lava tubes formed during an eruption of Mt. St. Helen's about 2000 years ago. Well I got to see Kyla for about 5 seconds during the whole field trip. Here is the condensed version:
Lunches and flashlights with spare batteries packed. Kyla is on the bus and parents have to carpool. Our van of 6 moms made a pit stop (read stopped at a super slow Starbucks) and attempted to catch up with the bus. We never saw it. We passed Ape Caves, but turned around and found them only wasting about 10 minutes. We found the caves, but the kids were already below ground. Three moms rushed into the caves to catch up, but I really had to pee. Me and the other two moms found the cave entrance, but I was the only one with a not very bright flashlight. Not good since we were instructed that every person needed their own flashlight. So we went back up and checked out the map. Seemed obvious that we could take the above ground trail and meet them at the other end. We quickly hiked 1.3 miles and found the cave exit. We went down, looked around, went up and waited 30 minutes with cameras ready. No kids. OK, hike back. The field trip was over. Wasn't that fun. I made it to the bus just in time to let Kyla know I wasn't lost in a cave somewhere. Then we drove the 1.5 hours back to school. The weather was beautiful and I had a nice 2.5 mile hike with 2 strangers, but I totally missed the whole trip. Kyla was worried about me, but she was with 40 other kids so she still had a good time. Thank goodness I wasn't really needed to do actual chaperoning. I keep feeling like I really let her down, but at least nothing awful happened. No one got hurt or truly lost. Wouldn't it be nice if there was cell phone reception on a mountain or in a cave? Now that it's over, I'm going to try and forget the whole thing, except that I haven't even talked to the teacher yet. Do you think the school can fire a volunteer?
Oh, here are a couple a pics I got. Just pretend it's my kid and all her friends climbing out of a cave.
I mostly blame the mom that mentioned Starbucks - I didn't even order anything there. Well, I'll get another chance in three years. Next time I won't let the bus out of my sight!
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