Proof this Elf's life is a National Lampoon Movie: Exhibit 3,956

Heyas,

So, I am officially on Christmas break. And all I can say is: Thank. The. Universe. Two whole weeks just to decompress and plan and get my energy and creativity back so I can go in and wow my kids for the looooooong stretch of time before we get another break. I'm excited.

I'm also exhausted. Why? Oh, because the other day this Elf took a field trip with seven of her kids.

A field trip FROM HELL!!!!!

*insert thunderclap and lightning flash*

No lie. Let's just recap, shall we? It started off innocently enough. My kids had a school function run by the umbrella company that runs the charter school I teach at. The function happened to be in a city three hours away, but I wasn't sweating that. I had seven kids to take care of (which, compared to what I normall have in a day is, like, nothing). I thought it would be a good time for all.

I need to learn to stop thinking things like that.

The first blow landed when I was informed that I would have to drive the kids to the event myself, in our tech coordinator's minivan. Not that I felt we should have had a bus or anything for seven kids...but I'm a little leery of the potential legal issues in transporting children in a personal vehicle. I have a several students that I regularly give rides home to--but those are kids whose parents I have a relationship with. Several of the kids I was driving, I've never even met their parents.

Then, I find out I get to pay for gas myself. I'm getting reimbursed...but the immediate expense was not something I'd planned on (I ended up spending, like, a hundred dollars on gas!) Again, not such a big deal if I had been told of it earlier. But whatever.

The actual drive itself was pleasant...the kids were hilarious and we had a really good time. Theeeeeeen, we get to the event. We ran a little late because of traffic and ended up with only about ten minutes to find the building, park, and get the kids inside for registration. And of course, the street is under construction. And it's one of those towns with a metric crap-ton of one-way streets and side streets and crap. I ended up having to do some weird hexogonal maneuver through two blocks to get us to the entrance that it told us to go to on our info packet.

Only to be told that the event was moved because of the construction and I have to go back and do the hexogonal maneuver through two blocks of traffic again to get back to a parking garage we passed when we first got off the highway.

No problem.

So we go, we get registered (barely), the event goes fine and we're only about twenty minutes behind schedule for the drive back, so I promise the kids we can go to a pizza buffet for dinner (for some of them, this was a REAL treat).

And we get back to the van, I pile them in, turn the key...and nothing happens.

Yes, this Elf apparently left the lights on and the battery is now dead. Wonderful. Fortunately, the campus security where we were had a "jumpstart" service, and we only had to wait about twenty minutes for someone to come and get us started again.

Which would have been fine, except that twenty minutes put us smack-dab in the middle of rush-hour traffic. I get back on the highway to gridlock, and only realize when it was too late that we're two lanes over from a left exit we needed to go back home. I'm not about to execute a Hail-Mary merge in a minivan with children in the back (at least ones I'm not related to), so I get off on the next exit and blunder my way through yet another hexogonal maneuver through two blocks to get back onto the highway heading back to our exit.

Things go pretty smoothly from there, and I dare to think that the worst is over. We're running about an hour late, now, but I DID promise the kids pizza buffet, so I call up all the parents and let them know that we'll be about an hour and a half late for pickup. And since I'm feeding the kids, the parents are really cool about it, and give the okay.

And the pizza buffet was fun. Really fun. A good time was had by all, and the food was pretty decent, and we actually got out earlier than I was anticipating.

So, naturally, as we are finally getting on the highway to head home, I hear from the backseat:

"Uh, Ms. E? Can you pull over?"

And I'm all, "No, I told you guys to go to the bathroom before we left! We don't have time for more pit stops, guys."

And then I hear:

"But Ms. E...I kinda pooped myself."

*sigh*

Yeah. Two of my boys were engaging in the wonderful adolescent tradition known as a "farting contest" in the back of the van and one of them put a *little* too much effort into it and "sharted".

Those of you who don't know what a "shart" is...you have no idea how lucky you are.

So I pull off a random exit and we get into one of those areas that has, like, fifty hotels, but no gas stations, and have to drive around until I finally see a Subway. Pull in there and then loiter about inside with a Coke while my kids gleefully buy cookies and our culprit cleans himself up. Lose another half hour.

At this point it's eight o' clock, it's still a two hour drive home, and I'm pretty sure I'm gonna get yelled at by some parents.

So, naturally...when we get back on the highway, I take the wrong exit, going east instead of west, and do not realize it until we've gone almost thirty miles in the wrong direction.

*sigh*

I turn around, get us back on track, but by that time we're so far behind schedule it's not even funny.

We FINALLY get back to the school at ten o' clock at night (and at that point, I was pretty sure I was gonna get punched in the throat by some parents)...but as I foolishly volunteered to drive four students all the way home (a lot of parents at our school work night shifts or multiple jobs), I literally did not get through my door until midnight.

On the upside...all the kids took time to come and tell me the next day that they had a GREAT time, even with all the problems.

And the parents were really understanding about me getting lost and no one punched me in the throat.

I consider any day I don't get punched in the throat a win.

But I still think I live in a National Lampoon movie.

Things this Elf is looking forward to: Christmas baking! Sugar cookies, date balls, raspberry-white chocolate torte! Woohoo!
Things currently annoying the crap out of her: Nothing, really. It's almost Christmas, and it's snowing! It's been almost three years since I saw a real, good, hard snow.
Pretty boy of the moment: Back to Michael Weatherly. Gah, that smile!