Field Trip!

Yesterday was Gabe's first preschool field trip. The school he attends has a field trip of some sort planned for every month of the school year. I love it! Joe even took the afternoon off so he could come with us, which made Gabe very happy. He was the only boy with both parents there (and he was lovin' that).

For September's field trip, we visited a local apple orchard and learned EVERYTHING there is to know about apples, and picking apples, and sorting apples, and storing apples, and making apple cider, and selling apples, and...well, you get the picture. I think the preschoolers were done learning about apples after, oh, the first five minutes of standing in the 82 degree sunshine, with the bumblebees buzzing all around and the poison ivy beneath each tree, mocking me with its three-leafed red-stemmed stance. (Can you tell I hate that stuff? I am so allergic, I'll probably wake up covered with itchy bubbles just from looking at it.)

There are about 50,000 types of apples, and we learned the name of every one. Okay, okay, we learned about five of them. Here is a Melrose apple. Or a Macintosh. Or a Red Delicious. (Clearly I wasn't paying enough attention to Miss Sherry.)

It was a neat experience to see how the other kids respond to Gabe. Macy is another strong personality in the class, and she is drawn to Gabe. At any given time, Gabe was surrounded by two or three girls. The boys, not so much. I think they are a bit intimidated by him. I love the look on Macy's face:

The orchard is owned by Macy's grandpa, so her class got special treatment, it seemed. Gabe was thrilled to be able to sit on the donkey (and he was actually quiet for five minutes!).

Love this face:

I think Joe was just as excited today. He has never had the chance to go on a field trip with any of our kids. He is blessed to have a job and a boss that allows that now. God is good.

Anytime I called out to Gabe to say cheese for the camera, every kid in his class would look up and shout "CHEESE", too. They are so stinkin' cute! We are really lucky he is with such a good group of kids. (I'm hoping the peer pressure of being well-behaved and good listeners will work.)

In addition to the donkey, there were tons of other farm animals there, too. I'm not about to post every picture of every animal (yes, I took a picture of every animal...hey, I'm a scrapbooker at heart, ya know). But I loved this one of Gabe watching this pig waddling up to the fence, hoping for an apple handout.

What a fun day! What I'm really looking forward to is the pumpkin patch/hayride field trip. As Gabe would say, "Dat's my faborit!"