These scones were very buttery.  Other than that, nothing to get excited about.  They are called Honey Nut Scones, but I left the nuts out.  They were fine.  I had to put them on two layers of china to make them look pretty.  Today when I was trying to remember what I made last week it was a struggle*. Instead of talking about boring scones, I’ll share the crazy BEAR story from this week!

I volunteered to hike with the 4th graders on Wednesday. It was a gorgeous day, fortunately, because we left at 9:00 am and got back at 1:30.  On the hike up the hill towards the trail we were walking through a neighborhood instead of on a trail and I said, “You know… there is a trail we could be on.”  One of the teachers said, “The thing about the trail, is that it’s wide open and they can see how far we have walked and how far we have to walk, and they freak out.  If we walk through the neighborhood, they are distracted and they complain less.”  I should never second guess a teacher, they really know what they are doing.

On the way back we paused, and the teachers and the other mom and I had to huddle to hear this news: The school was on lockdown because there was a bear in the neighborhood.  There was a bear between us and the school.  We looked on my phone at a map of where the bear had been spotted and planned a route that went around it.  We asked the school to call us with any updates and we started walking again, this time trying to stay closer together instead of spread out across a 4 block area.  Soon we heard the bear was on the move, but we didn’t know where he was going.  When we crossed Broadway, we saw an animal control officer so I ran after him while the teachers got the kids in as small a group as possible.

The animal control officer was speaking Spanish to some construction workers and I assume he was talking about the bear (or oso) so I waited my turn to talk.

Animal Control Officer:  blah blah blah OSO blah bla?
Construction workers: No we haven’t seen a bear. (Turns out they spoke English. I am going to assume the animal control officer thought they didn’t understand him in English, when really they just couldn’t hear him over the jack hammer.)
Me: Hi! We are trying to get back to school, can you tell us the safest way to get there?
Animal Control Officer: No. I’m not gonna tell you that. Just make sure to make a lot of noise.
Me: (Shocked! I got the impression he didn’t want us to sue him if we got mauled by a bear, but seriously dude, we need to get 50 nine year olds to a school 3 blocks from here, help us out!)  Okaaaaaay.  What I am saying is, we want to avoid the bear. Can you tell me where the bear is, and we can not go that way?
Animal Control Officer: I don’t know where the bear is.
Me: Ok thanks.

Then I ran back to the group. Former Elementary School Mom and Local Hero, Camille, was telling the teachers where the bear had been and where it was going.  It appeared to be going from the school to the mountains while we were coming from the mountains to the school.  The bear was just a block or two North of us.  Fortunately! So we continued to the school, taking the shortest path across the park, just in case.

About 10 yards later someone spotted a praying mantis in a parking lot and tried to pick it up.  A heroic 4th grade teacher dove in front to spare the insect and said, “Let’s help it get back to the bushes over here.” It crawled onto her shoe and then her leg and she inched over to a bush to shoo it off while 4th graders screamed in shock and fear and delight.  I wasn’t too worried about sneaking up on a bear after that because of their nose level. Although if they were screaming about a praying mantis, I can only imagine what it would have been like if we had encountered a bear. Soon after that we were back at school and a very exciting field trip was over.

One note about the field trip – Jack let a friend wear his new fancy sunglasses and baseball hat and she looked adorable, or as Jack said, “She looks even cooler than I do when I wear those.”  I felt like I could see him age ten years while he was talking and it was bittersweet.  It reminded me of being in college and sitting around a table in the cafeteria watching super-hot Eric walk in with a girl who was wearing his baseball cap. We were all silently observing until Brian Burger said, “Ah the baseball cap. The lavaliere of the GDI.”

I was enjoying this memory so much that I didn’t even give my normal lecture about hat sharing and lice.  I am sure I will come to regret that when I am shaving Jack’s head later this year, and telling Dave he can go ahead and buy another bike if he agrees to spend two weeks combing my hair for nits every night for half an hour.  But Jack and his friend were so cute, and I didn’t want to break the spell.

*Wordpress wanted to autocorrect struggle to strugggle. Isn’t that odd?