The Wheels on the Bus...

Ever since Rylee has become aware of buses, she has wanted to ride on one. She loves singing "The Wheels on the Bus," which contributed to her bus infatuation. So, after several weeks of her telling me every time she saw a bus that she wanted to ride on one, I finally planned a little field trip for a bus ride.

In my head, I was thinking that buses went in little loops and we could just get on a bus and stay there until we got back to our starting point. Once I realized that wasn't very practical, I thought it would be fun to take a bus to a park, play for a while, and then ride back. The only problem with that was that I wasn't smart enough to figure out how to figure out where the bus stops were in relation to parks. So Katie came up with a great plan: we would ride the bus from the University Mall to the Provo Town Center and get ice cream, and then ride back (finding the bus at two malls had to be easy, right?) Well it should have been easy. Except that I saw the 850 bus and jumped right on without a thought as to which way it was heading; as it turns out, we were on the northbound bus, when we should have been on the southbound bus. Oops! But we decided it didn't really matter that much.

Here we all are on the bus. Rylee and Ava were very excited to be on the bus. I wish I had pictures or a video of them as they were actually getting on the bus. Rylee marched right up, pushed her way to the back of the bus, found a seat and sat down with a huge grin on her face; Ava on the other hand stayed close to Katie and me. Those girls sure love playing together, but they definitely have their own ways of doing everything! I had to take Rylee off her seat and bring her farther down a few rows to the back of the bus where there was room for our whole gang.

I think that it was right about the time this picture was taking that the girls started pushing and fussing at each other, so I gave Rylee a little talk about how we were on the bus to have fun and if she was going to fuss and fight we were going to get off. Then I started snapping pictures and Katie pulled out her video camera. I didn't think much of it until a few stops later when a lady who was sitting at the VERY back of the bus got off...with a little boy who was probably about 4 or 5. We were sitting on the benches that are sideways, so I had seen her before, but I hadn't noticed her little boy. I felt a little bit guilty as I realized that they were not on the bus for a field trip, but that this was their regular mode of transportation.
Anyway, as we rode the bus, the girls loved looking out the window.
We decided to get off at 800 North in Orem and get some ice cream at Macey's instead of at the mall as we had originally planned.

Cailyn, of course, loved the ice cream cone.

Ava and Rylee found the bouncy ball display and played with the balls for a bit.

Then it was time to catch the bus again. As it turns out, there wasn't a southbound bus stop at 800 North, so we had to walk almost all the way down to 400 North to catch the bus. We got there about 10 minutes before the bus was supposed to get there, so we thought it wouldn't be too bad of a wait. We told Rylee and Ava to hold on to the pole so the bus would know to come get us.

That lasted for all of about 30 seconds for Rylee, but Ava held on for a while.

Eventually, Rylee returned and discovered that she could see through the holes in the pole.

Well, 4:03 came and went, but the 4:03 bus never showed. The girls got rather restless and started playing in the rocks. Rylee and Cailyn tried to eat the rocks.

When Rylee started putting cigarette butts in her mouth, I decided it was time to get her off the ground!

Of course, then everyone else wanted to sit on the wall, too (:

We waited, and waited, and waited...and finally, a little after 4:30 the bus came (I don't know what happened to the 4:03 bus; the next bus was scheduled to come at 4:33.)

After 45 minutes of waiting for the bus, I was so happy to be back on it again! (Cailyn was happy to be holding on to the pole again - she held on to it almost the entire time both ways.)

I think our adventure was successful in two ways:

1. The girls had a blast!

2. I have a newfound appreciation for my car and the fact that I don't have to rely on public transportation!