If It Can Break, It Will

There are rules in nature and rules of things.   If there is a yellowjacket or honey bee flying around, it will sting you.  Well not me, but they always seem to find the kid that will scream and swat at them, which ends in a sting every time.  True, yellowjackets and hornets will sting you just because you are walking by.  One time when I was a kid, somehow one got up my pant leg and stung me six times before I could get them off.  

Actually I was told wasps, hornets or whatever you want to call them, don't sting, they BITE.  Who knew?  Anyway, we dealt with a couple of "bites" yesterday at the top of the slide.  After much investigation, we finally found the nest and sprayed it.  Hopefully that won't happen again.

There's always something when you have 250 school kids running around.  It was our first Field Trip day.  It's hard to gauge how long it will take them to move from one place to another.  I sent them to the barn too early, resulting in pandemonium when they had to wait ten minutes for the show.  Bad Nancy.  I'll do better next time.

Since it rained last night we were frantically cleaning up the bounce pillow of mud and water.  I did better with the next two groups.  The hardest part is getting them OUT at 12:00.  In spite of warning after warning, they drag their feet (and the kids) until we are scrambling.  

We handed out a pumpkin to every kid and every adult and thought they were gone, only to find them sneaking in the back door to use the restrooms.  All 50 of them.  That of course required a major clean up job, as you can imagine.

Once set up, as I walked to the back, I hear talking.  There should not be anyone there at this hour.  Sure enough, two had gone under the ropes and were playing in the Corn Maze.  I chased them out and locked the gate.  Gosh ... you have to watch them every second.

Moving on around the area, this is the Gem Mining station, looking across to the snack bar.  I was giving breaks at the time.  This is not my favorite location since they do not have a place to sit down.  Believe me, I sit at every possibly moment.  My feet have been screaming like that kid that got stung.  

This is the sluice box.  Water comes from that tank, runs down the ladder and into our box, which runs to the end behind me.  You get a bag of pay dirt, which you dump into the little boxes and swish around in the water.  

The screens in the bottom filter out all the sand (which is used again and again) and you are left with MAGIC!  Actually it's just some Australian mix along with two magnets, a piece or two of pyrite and one magic rock ground down to look like an animal ... mostly dinosaurs.  The kids go crazy over this stuff.

In the meantime, oh the sounds of electricity mixed with water!!  The gal working the Snack Bar has not done it before and isn't familiar with the fact that all those things plugged in will not work on the minimal electricity available.

They put water in the hot dog steamer, only to find it running out the bottom.  That should have been a clue.  I finally remembered that pan had a hole in the bottom, which I complained about for two years to no avail.  The heating element got wet and POP .... nothing worked.  Of course then they couldn't figure out WHICH pot had the hole, because the two they were looking at did not.  

At long last I found the holy one, which didn't walk on water well at all, and described how we used it and more inportantly WHERE we used it.  As of now, it's out of business since there are STILL too many things plugged in.  This is a BARN, not the Ritz Hotel!  

About that time I got a call from the slide.  Someone's phone fell out of their pocket and was lounging halfway to the bottom.  Oh the horror!!  Just get on a rug and slide down, grabbing it along the way.

Then it was off to find the kid lost in the Corn Maze, which covers about 8 acres.  I get lost every time I go in there, so I conned one of the worker kids into doing it.  He was gone for a long time before coming out alone.  Apparently the parent screaming for the kid was just playing hide and seek.  He wasn't lost at all.

Here's another pretty ... have you seen a sunflower before it blooms?

Amazing these things, which run from three to ten foot tall.  I think they plant them so the adults will smile instead of scream at their kids.  It does work on occasion.

And so the day finally ended as I waited for one lone kid on the Bounce Pillow to quit bouncing so we could close the entire place for the night.  He refused to get off until exactly 8:00 on the dot.  I did a quick sweep, told my feet to hush up and signed out.  Lucky for me I get to sit until 10:00 this morning.  Oh the joy!!