Notes: Thanks to Mari and Sammy for being their always awesome selves. You're the best, ladies!
Readers and REAL McRollers - Thank you for the amazing support! It is always appreciated.
Hope you enjoy!
Always Exciting (A McRoll in the REAL World Story)
"Field Trip Day, Field Trip Day, it's Field Trip Day," Angie sang off-key as she marched down the stairs. She spotted Pumpkin curled up on the back of the sofa and skipped over to the dozing cat once she'd reached the bottom. "It's Field Trip Day, Pumpkin!"
"Hey, who's ready for breakfast on this totally normal, nothing unusual, nothing special happening day?" Steve asked, fighting a smile from the kitchen doorway.
Angie whirled on him with a gasp. "It's Field Trip Day, Daddy! It's very very special."
"Oh, that's right, I'm so sorry," he said, no longer fighting the smile. He came over and kissed her head. "In that case we better have a special breakfast."
"I can't believe we get to go to the library for our field trip," she said happily, grabbing his hand and swinging it as they made their way to the kitchen.
"I'm glad you're excited," he replied. "Your mommy and I were a little worried you'd think it was boring since we go to the library almost every week."
She gaped at him. "The library is never boring!"
"Who said the library is boring?" DJ asked, joining them in the kitchen.
"Daddy!" Angie said, still shocked.
He held his hands up defensively. "I didn't mean the library was boring, we just thought you might wish your last field trip of the year was somewhere else since you go to the library outside of school."
Angie shook her head. "I love the library. And Mr. S asked us to raise our hands if we've been to the library before and some of our class friends have never been to the library," she reported, looking slightly stricken at the thought. "So it's good because now they'll get to go there."
"That is very good," Steve agreed. "Oatmeal or scrambled eggs?"
"Oatmeal, please," DJ said, taking the carton of mango juice out of the refrigerator.
Angie tilted her head, considering. "Sc'ambled eggs, please."
Steve nodded. "Coming right up."
"You're gonna have so much fun," DJ said, carefully pouring juice into two cups. "And Mommy will be there!"
Angie beamed. "She's a sharperone!"
"Chaperone," Catherine corrected gently, coming into the kitchen. She stopped at the table to kiss both kids' heads. "I'm excited, too."
"I love when Mommy or Daddy can be a sharper–" She stopped. "Chaperone. Remember in preschool when we went to the farm and we got to feed the animals?"
"Mm, I do," Catherine said.
"That was our first field trip together."
Catherine smiled, setting down a plate of fruit on the table between the two children. "Actually, our first field trip together was way before that."
Angie looked at her quizzically. "Where? I don't remember."
Catherine shared a quick smile with Steve who was over at the stove finishing up the scrambled eggs. "It was actually a field trip to the aquarium with Jacob's second grade class, but you were there because you were in my tummy."
DJ and Angie exchanged a wide-eyed look, and both grinned. "Whoa!" DJ said. "That's so cool!"
"What was my favorite part?" Angie asked.
Catherine chuckled. "I'd say the clams," she replied, thinking of the Braxton-Hicks contractions she'd had when looking at the mollusks with Jacob.
Angie blinked. "Really?" She pondered this a moment and then nodded. "I do like clams."
Steve chuckled, setting a plate of scrambled eggs in front of her and a bowl of oatmeal in front of DJ.
"Well," Angie said, shaking herself a little as if to bring her thoughts back to the upcoming field trip. She picked up her fork and smiled. "I'm glad I'm not in your tummy for this field trip, because it's going to be very very fun!"
On the bus ride over to the library, Angie regaled her classmates with the tale of her "first" field trip in her mommy's tummy.
"Clams?" Justin, Ashae's father, leaned over and asked with a chuckle as he followed Catherine off the bus.
Catherine looked back at him and grinned, shrugging. "Why not?" Some of the chaperones had driven their own vehicles to the library, but Catherine, Justin, and a few others opted to ride the bus with the kids and their teacher Mr. Seftas.
The whole group gathered on the grassy area near the library entrance to get organized.
"I see Ms. Kristin!" Angie exclaimed, pointing to the familiar figure waiting behind the glass windows.
Mr. S smiled. "I bet the librarians are ready for us. Let's get into our groups so we don't waste a minute of library time."
He passed out a nametag and list to each adult as he spoke. "The library asked us to split into four groups for our field trip, and we're lucky to have so many chaperones that each group has at least two adults."
Angie and Ashae gripped each others' hands tightly, silently hoping they'd be in the same group.
Mr. S read off each group's adults and children and had them move to stand by each other, finishing with, "And finally the blue group with Angie's mom Lieutenant Catherine and Ashae's father Mr. Justin will be Angie, Ashae, Eden, Malik, and Joshua."
Angie and Ashae gave little squeals, much to Catherine and Justin's amusement, and both girls eagerly welcomed their other three classmates to the group. As both Catherine and Justin had visited the classroom many times throughout the year, they were familiar faces to all of the children.
"Okay, friends, let's not keep Ms. Kristin and the other librarians waiting any longer," Mr. S said. "Stay with your group and follow me. And remember, we're going into the library so we're going to be nice and quiet," he added, placing a finger to his mouth.
They headed toward the entrance where a smiling Ms. Kristin held open the door. "Welcome to the library," she said. "We're so excited you're here!"
She nodded gratefully to one of the chaperones who stepped forward to hold the door so she could lead the group inside.
"Hey, I've been here!" a student said, recognizing the art installation of paper flowers hanging from the ceiling.
"It's the best library!" Angie said. "And Ms. Kristin is the best librarian."
"I appreciate that, Angie," Kristin said. She led them into one of the larger program/meeting rooms off the lobby and had the children sit on the floor so she could make introductions and explain the plan for the day.
"Welcome!" she said again. "I see a lot of familiar faces out there, so I know I'll see some hands in the air when I ask who's been here before?" Several hands shot into the air, including Angie's and Ashae's, and Kristin smiled again. "That's great! And who has been to another branch of the public library before?" A few more hands went up. "Awesome! And who's been to the library at your school?" The remaining hands excitedly flew into the air. "Amazing! You've all been to a library before! I'm so happy to hear it. I'm Ms. Kristin, one of the children's librarians here at the McCully-Moiliili branch."
"You're not a children," a student said, confused.
Kristin smiled. "You're right," she squinted a little to read his nametag, "Cameron. What I mean is that I'm a librarian who works mostly with children and their families. This is Ms. Laurel, Mr. Derek, and Ms. Katrina," she continued, motioning to the two other librarians in the room. "They work in the children's department as well, and today we're going to show you around the library, do a fun activity, make a craft, and listen to some stories. How does that sound?"
There were several excited gasps and enthusiastic nods in response.
"Great!" Kristin said. "Now I believe your teacher has already separated you into four groups?" She looked to Mr. Seftas for confirmation and he nodded.
"We have the yellow group, the red group, the blue group, and the green group," he said, pointing to the green outline on his own nametag to show how the groups could be identified.
"Oh that's fantastic," Kristin said. "I may have to pass that suggestion on to future field trip groups. Let's have the yellow group stand up. You're going to follow Ms. Laurel to our children's programming room for a fun activity." When she saw a couple of dejected faces in the group still seated, she quickly said, "Don't worry, everyone will get to do everything today. We're going to rotate groups about every twenty minutes or so."
Once Ms. Laurel had led the first group out of the room, Kristin directed the red group to go with Mr. Derek to the children's area to look at books and play with the toys and games available.
"Okay, that leaves the blue group and the green group, right? Let's have the green group hang out in this room with Ms. Katrina and make a special craft, and the blue group can stand up and follow me. You'll be the first group for the library tour. Though I think there's at least one person in your group who could probably lead the tour herself," she said, winking at Angie.
"She probably could," Catherine said with a smile as she took her daughter's hand. "But we're going to try to restrain ourselves and let Ms. Kristin show everyone around, right?" she asked, squeezing Angie's hand meaningfully.
Angie nodded immediately, remembering her mother's reminders on their way to school this morning.
"Are we going to see any secret parts of the library?" Malik asked as they followed Kristin out of the room and back into the lobby.
"Secret parts?" Kristin repeated. She smiled. "No secret parts, but we're going to start with one of my favorite places in the library. Are you ready to see it?"
All of the kids enthusiastically agreed.
"Remember, quiet voices," Justin reminded them.
"We're very very ready," Angie whispered, finger to her lips.
Kristin smiled. "In that case, let's go."
After their tour, Angie's group got to hang out in the children's area with Mr. Derek.
"There's lots to do here, isn't there, Angie?" he asked. He'd joined the department a little less than a year ago and was already well known to the McGarrett Rollins family.
She nodded. "There's a pretend kitchen like at school, and a puppet show, and puzzles and games, and the LEGO table where I met my brother DJ for the first time before he was official, and lots and lots and lots of books!"
"That's a good list," Derek said. "Go ahead and have fun, everyone. Let me know if you need help finding anything."
Malik and Joshua headed for the shelves with the games, having spotted Connect Four. Eden wanted to check out the play kitchen and Ashae's dad offered to join her while Catherine stayed with Angie and Ashae who had decided to start at the LEGO table.
"Let's build a castle where the princess knights can live," Asahe suggested.
"Yeah!" Angie agreed, and the two immediately started pulling blocks out of the tubs stored beneath the table. "Let's make it really tall."
"Okay! And let's use all the color blocks."
After a few minutes, Derek joined Catherine who was splitting her attention between the boys who had set up their game on one of the small round tables and the two girls.
"So what's this about Angie meeting DJ for the first time at the LEGO table?" he asked.
Catherine flashed him a smile, keeping most of her attention on the kids. "A couple of months before we officially met DJ, we actually played with him at the LEGO table before storytime one day when he just happened to be in the library at the same time." She smiled at him again. "It was just a few minutes and we had no idea what the future held, but they played together so sweetly. Angie was just two, so she doesn't really remember, but DJ does, and we've told the story so much that she might as well remember herself." Her gaze softened even more at the memory. "He was building a boat because the table is blue, and Angie started sharing block after block with him in that way that two-year-olds have."
"That is an amazing story," Derek said sincerely.
"Thanks, I think so, too."
"Lieutenant Catherine!" Joshua called. "Look what me and Malik did."
"Look at that," she said, coming over to their table. "Did you work together to make a pattern?" she asked, guessing that the boys had decided to fill in the whole bracket rather than actually compete.
Malik nodded. "I did the red ones and Josh did the black ones."
"That's great teamwork."
The boys beamed. "Teamwork makes the dream work," Joshua said. "That's what Mr. S says."
Catherine smiled. "And he's right. What's the plan now? Do you want to keep playing games? Maybe look at a book?"
"Would you read a book to us?" Malik asked hopefully.
Her smile widened. "Read a book in the library? I'd love to." She winked at them. "Especially if there are no goats."
"Then we played Book Bingo with Ms. Laurel," Angie bubbled at the dinner table later that evening as she answered her father and brother's questions about the field trip. "It's like regular bingo but with books, not numbers. There was Elephant and Piggie, and Pete the Cat, and it was so fun! Look at all the stickers I got!" She pointed to her shirt where she'd put each sticker she won during bingo.
"Lucky just like your namesake," Steve said with a smile.
Angie nodded. "Everybody won so everybody got stickers."
"That's awesome," DJ said.
"Then we made bookmarks with Ms. Katrina and mine is rainbow and it says Read on one side and Angie on the other side. Can I get it so Daddy and DJ can see?" she asked, looking at Catherine.
"After we're done eating," her mother said.
"Okay," Angie replied easily, and took another bite of pasta.
"Did you see anything you hadn't seen before?" DJ asked.
Angie thought for a moment. "No, but guess what? Ms. Kristin told us where her favorite part of the library is!"
His eyes widened. "Where?"
"The new books! She said she likes going over there when they get new stuff because it's like getting presents."
"Cool!"
"So you got a tour, made a princess knight castle with Ashae at the LEGO table, played book bingo, and made your very own bookmark?" Steve listed. "Sounds like a very very fun field trip."
"Then Ms. Kristin told us a story! There was a squeaky door and we all went 'eeeeeeee," she said, holding her arm at an angle and moving it as if it was a door closing. "And then Ms. Kristin screamed 'cause she was scared and there was a cat and a dog and … and … and a horse!"
"That doesn't sound like a very quiet story considering you were in the library," Steve observed with a grin.
"Ms. Kristin said it was okay because we were in the program room so no one else could hear us."
"Ahh," he said, finishing off the last of his pasta.
"That sounds like a cool story," DJ said.
"We got the book!" Angie told him. "Mommy and I went back to the library when you were at practice and got it so we can read it tonight."
"But maybe not for bedtime because it's not a very … calming story," Catherine said with a smile. "We'll read it after dinner, and maybe Angie can act it out like Ms. Kristin did."
"I can use Angie the Aardvark and DJ the Giraffe! That'll be so funny!"
"Well, I guess there was no need to worry that you'd be bored going somewhere you knew so well," Steve said.
Angie shook her head, mouth full of pasta.
"It was a really great field trip," Catherine said. "Ms. Kristin was telling me that they try and invite as many kindergarten and first grade classes as they can to visit throughout the year. For a lot of kids it might be their first visit to the library and the librarians hope it encourages them to come back with their families."
Steve nodded. "I hope it does." He smiled at Angie and DJ. "But I know one family who needs no such encouragement, right?"
"Right!" Angie said.
"We're a library family," DJ said with a firm nod.
Angie beamed. "A library family forever."
Hope you enjoyed!
Note: Can you guess what I've been doing at the library the last few weeks? :-)
The story Angie mentions is The Squeaky Door, a Puerto Rican folktale. There is a picture book retelling by Margaret Read McDonald and illustrated by Mary Newell DePalma (HarperCollins, 2006). It's great fun and definitely not a bedtime story when I tell it :-)
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