Just in Time for Pioneer Day

Tomorrow Olivia starts fifth grade. Before that happens, I figured I better get busy and post the pictures I took from her last fourth grade field trip. I was a good mom, and went as a chaperone. Fortunately, this field trip was slightly more appealing than the dump.

 Here we are on the bus on the way to This is the Place State Park. Nothing like a hot windy bus ride on a bus full of exuberant 4th graders at nine in the morning to wake you up and get that blood pumping.

Right off the bat, they got those kids hooked up with the handcarts. This is Liv's friend Sophie in her handcart group, which reminds me that I was supposed to send Sophie's mom a copy of this picture.

Here's Olivia's hand cart group. They had to push this handcart around the hills for about 15 minutes. 15 minutes was enough to convince all of them that they never ever wanted to be handcart pioneers.

Olivia hated the handcarts. Like really really despised them. Those two boys in the back did not help much, they were pushing a lot faster than the girls in the front were pulling. It was a lesson in teamwork that made the team want to shoot each other.

This was such a hot day- it was about 100 degrees, and they were working pretty hard getting that handcart up some hills. Olivia did not want to be there, and as usual, expressed herself very adamantly. She managed to work herself up into quite a dither. She started to cry. I thought she would be embarrassed to be crying in front of her classmates. Instead, her sweet friend Serra gave her suckers, and several other girls came up to her to console her and pat her on the back.

The only thing that saved the day was that right after this, Ella almost got heat stroke so we had to take her to the bathroom where it was air conditioned, and get a nice cold drink of water. On the way to the bathroom, Olivia just happened to stumble on to the gold mining place, where there was a shady little creek to splash in. Our group wasn't doing gold mining that day, which considering how hot it was, was really stupid. So while I took Ella to the bathroom, Olivia horned her way into a different group that was doing gold mining and sat happily among strangers, finding fools gold and splashing in the water. It was a godsend.

The best part of the kids day was going to the Energy Solutions Arena and running around on the Jazz floor.

Her fourth grade class. It's not a great picture, but she is in there somewhere.

Okay, that about wraps up the fourth grade. We can bring on fifth grade now. Even though it's July.