As usual, when Ben has a school trip, I make sure to attend. What can I say? The kid is very strong willed and beats to his own drum. I don’t trust him not to get himself lost, and I don’t think there is an adult out there who can keep him corralled.

Here is a perfect example. I show up for the field trip this morning. Every kid is sitting on the rug listening to the teacher read a story. And what is Ben doing?

He’s drawing on the white board.

Soon after we board the bus. Ben, bad boy that he is, insists on sitting in the back, then laughing hysterically as we go over every bump.

Today we visited North Park Village Nature Center. It’s a Chicago Park District park right in Chicago. It’s so big that we saw a few deer roaming around. Did I mention it’s right in the city? Forty Six acres of woodlands that I never even knew about!

As a bonus this time I got Emerson as well as Ben to chaperone. I love her because she can really hold her own with Ben. This weekend I caught them at a party in a bouncy house wrestling each other on the ground. I think she was winning.

Besides deer we saw all kinds of bugs, turtles, crawfish, and flowers. It was a lot of fun to poke around and because there a path without too many choices, it was not stressful at all keeping up with the group.

Of course, the best time had was in the end when they had free time to run around together like a pack of wolves in the open grassy areas.