I Took 12 kids to Washington, DC last Monday...

...And I actually brought all 12 of them back on Friday!!!

Grandview’s middle school trip has been the bane of my existence since the school year began. How I got the job of putting it together, I’ll never be sure. I didn’t volunteer, and I wasn’t asked; but the duty fell to me nevertheless.

See, each and every school year, Grandview allows each of its middle school classes to go on a trip, but for the past two years, the current eighth grade class has had its trip cancelled due to lack of participation. This year, they were determined to go on a big trip to make up for missing out over the past couple years. As their advisor, I began the inquiry process. That part all makes sense. As time went on, though, the entire middle school got involved. The entire middle school consists of 55 kids and six advisors. Out of those six advisors, I was the only one working on putting this trip together.

In the end, only 12 kids actually signed up for the trip. But I’m not complaining about that, and I shouldn’t complain about the planning process anymore either, as that logistical nightmare is now long behind me.

The trip itself was last week. And the trip itself was wonderful. Despite the fact that I feel like my entire life was taken over for the past six months while I planned this trip, I had been looking forward to actually going on it for quite some time, not just because it would be a break from my normal routine but because I love seeing the kids in a different situation than school. I was excited about getting to know them better.

So, last Monday, at 4:30 in the morning, 12 kids, ages 12 to 14, and two chaperones boarded a big bus and began our 17-hour drive to Washington, DC. For most of the morning, all of the kids slept. It was absolute heaven. After our lunch stop, they had a bit more energy and started to make the bus drivers mad. I just stayed in my seat, reading my book and napping occasionally, and let the bus drivers handle them. When we finally got to our hotel (about 9:30 that night), it didn’t take long to get the kids settled in and settled down. Bedtime was easy. Wake-up call was not quite as easy, but every single kid made it to the bus on time the next morning!

On Tuesday, we saw Mount Vernon, two Smithsonian museums (Natural History – totally my element – and Air & Space), and Ford’s Theatre. I think, of everything we saw that day, the kids were most impressed by the baby pigs that had been born at Mount Vernon earlier in the month. Oh, and they absolutely loved the oxen that went by as we made our way around the grounds, and I was only a tiny bit embarrassed for them when they said, “Those are big cows!”

They asked a lot of questions, most of them pretty good (using the term loosely, of course):
Mount Vernon Tour Guide: This room is especially interesting because so much of the furniture is original. See the bed right there? That is George and Martha's original bed, and it is the bed that George Washington died in, in 1799.

6th Grader: Original mattress too?
In the museums, we let them run wild, giving them a meeting time and place. None of them got lost, and all of them made it to the meeting place at the right time.

After an exhausting day, we still had one last event – a walking ghost tour of Alexandria, Virginia. Only one child felt the need to hang onto me throughout the walk. I comforted this eighth grader (yes, all of the sixth graders were absolutely fine) as well as I could without actually saying, “Don’t worry, it’s not real” and offending the tour guide. I was just glad the little girl didn’t cry, although it looked inevitable when some of the boys “saw” something in a dark window of an old house. I said a silent prayer thanking God for not giving me any brothers.

We got to bed late that night, but the kids went right to sleep. The best thing, when dealing with kids (especially this many) is to just exhaust them. It was hard to wake them up the next morning, though. (This seemed to be a theme.)

It was cold and raining on Wednesday, but this was our day to be mostly out of doors. We couldn’t switch anything up because we had reservations and guides and an overall schedule to keep, so out in the rain we went to tour Arlington National Cemetery and watch the changing of the guard. “What was the point of that?” one of my kids asked after it was over. I rolled my eyes, gave my best answer, then thanked God once again that he hadn’t said that during the ceremony.

By the time our tour of Arlington was over, we were soaked and freezing. I would have been absolutely miserable, except that I had to try to keep the kids in positive spirits. “You’ll dry” and “We’ll be inside soon” were among my half-hearted attempts. The capitol tour was next; even I was bored during that, and I’m an adult who actually has an interest in this stuff. I felt bad for the kids, but they wouldn’t have known it by the nasty looks I shot them every time I caught one of them spacing out or checking their text messages during the presentation. At least we were inside.

The afternoon wasn’t any warmer, but the rain had mostly stopped by the time we went on our walk-all-over-DC event. We went from memorial to memorial to memorial to...this could go on and on and on...

We saw the WWII, Korean, and Vietnam War Memorials. The Washington Monument is closed, but we did get some good pictures of it from the outside. We also did the Lincoln, Jefferson, FDR, and (new!) Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorials. If you’ve been to DC, you’ll know that these memorials are not all lined up in a nice little row on a couple city blocks. Oh no, this was a lot of walking! And by the end of it, most of the kids were singing the same tune: “Miss Eeeaaammmesss, I’m tiiirrred” in high-pitched voices.

That night, the kids (and the chaperones) slept really well!

On Thursday, it was absolutely beautiful out. The temperature must have been in the high 60s (unseasonably warm for DC), and the sun was shining bright. But we spent most of the day inside at the Newseum (my favorite event of the entire trip), the National Archives, and the Holocaust Museum. This was a successful day because nobody broke anything, nobody got lost, and nobody complained about being wet and cold! I did have a moment of panic, though, when I saw two of my sixth grade boys being walked out of the Holocaust Museum by a security guard. I asked the other chaperone to check that out, and five minutes later he was happy to report that the security guard had simply been showing them to the bathroom. I’ve never been more relieved.

The following morning, we got the kids up and onto the bus early for our long trek home. Everyone was exhausted, and they were restless on the ride. Some of them were even cranky. (But hey, at least they weren’t wet, cold, and cranky!) At 11 that night, we were met back at school by a bunch of anxious parents. As the kids gathered their things and got off the bus, I reflected on our wonderful week. We had seen and done an awful lot in just three days in the city, and much of it had been utterly amazing.

But my greatest amazement of all was that, after I’d taken 12 kids, ages 12 to 14, to Washington, DC for a week, I’d actually managed to return every single one of them to his or her proper place in the world. I think this is a pretty impressive accomplishment. Of course, I never actually expected to lose any of them, but it did surprise and impress me every time I counted to 12.

“Everyone’s here!” I would say with excitement, and the bus would drive away.

I have never, in my life, had more responsibility than I did this week. And I have never lost so much sleep worrying about something than I did the week before. But now that we’re back, I will sleep soundly (for a long, long time, I hope). I did it. And I even enjoyed it a little bit.

But I don’t want to do it again anytime soon.