As we are winding down our homeschool year and heading toward summer we are finding it a little repetitive and we are ready to be outside.  So today, I went ahead and booked us for a little field trip to the Idaho Botanical Garden with the boys’ Charter School IDEA. Sorry, no pictures, I forgot the camera.  And the sunscreen.  But I digress.

They had two groups – one for the older kids and one for the younger ones.  The baby, the 4 year old and I followed along with the younger group.  Kids loved it and it was fun to be out doing something different and seeing some friends.  Since our weekly co-op had ended earlier this month and the kids had been cooped up in the house with colds for the last two weeks, it was really nice to finally get out again.

Normally, I would not have been overly excited to take all four kiddos, but I kept the two younger ones in the double stroller and it worked just fine.  Except for the part where it didn’t.  You know.  When the baby decides it’s fun to kick her brother’s chair and he gets mad and reaches back to hit her leg and then she retaliates with a punch to his shoulder.  Except for that part.  Oh, and the part where my stroller sounds like it is on death’s door.  Wheezing and squeaking in time to our walk.  Ah, nature.  The quiet of the garden.  The birds chirping.  The bees buzzing.  The stroller dying: wheez, creak, squeak (repeat incessantly).  I need to see about some WD40.

And the part where my six year old frustrated the tour guide with his insistence on not sitting here (where she had everything set up) because there are ANTS!!!  He was right.  There were ants.  She wanted everyone to sit on their behinds on the concrete.  But there were ants.  Actually, when she saw how many ants were, she moved the whole group over.  Then they all sat nicely on their little behinds and listened quietly as all 4-6 year olds do when grown-ups talk.  Yeah.  Well, they tried.  And they mostly remembered to raise their hands properly.

I think one of my favorite parts of the tour was when the guide asked the children if they knew of any leaves you could eat (we were talking about plant parts) and one little girl said that she had had “soil” leaves.  The guide didn’t have a clue what she was talking about, though the girl said they tasted lemony.  The busy tour guide just brushed it off and said she didn’t know about soil leaves, she had never had those and I just smirked.  The kid meant “sorrel” leaves, as in wood sorrel.  I guess it made me crack up on the inside because I realized this simple fact:  I speak kid.  I am in that season of life and I am so glad that I can understand most of what my young children tell me.  It’s always interesting to be hang out with people who don’t have little ones.  They don’t speak kid.  A child will run up to them and tell them the most fascinating thing and they nod their heads politely and say, “Wow!  That’s really cool!” but they don’t really have a clue what the child has just told them.  Then they look helplessly at the nearest mother or father for a translation.  I hope I will always understand this mysterious language.  Even when my own children are 40.

Back to the point though.  Field trip was great.  Idaho Botanical Garden was cool.  (We even got to see the Venus Flytraps!)  It was a beautiful day.  Made me want to take the kids to the Old Penitentiary though since it is right next door.  Maybe we will have to set up another outing soon.  That’s the beauty of homeschooling!