Grateful Friday

 1) My sweet boy from last year stopped by my classroom yesterday to give me a cookie because it was his birthday.

I love him so much!

2) Speaking of love, Adam got to see QE yesterday and I was jealous, but also happy for him.  The called over FaceTime and Adam read a story to her and then I did.  I told her to hug Papa goodnight for me and she sunk into him blissfully.  

Adam sent some pictures and the one of Braeden sitting on the floor at a bookstore, reading to QE, is my everything.  I heard that when you have grandchildren, you get to love your own children again and it is true and why grandchildren are so magical.

3) I'm grateful for prayer.  I have a whole list of people I am praying for.  I'm helpless to do much else, and  even though I wish I could do more, I feel united with them through my prayers.

4) I'm grateful for my siblings.  My mom has pneumonia and is in the hospital.  They all sprung into action and I was the last to know because my phone was silenced.  I had 47 unread messages in the group chat at the end of yesterday's school day.  I'm grateful for the love that unites us and for their sturdy capable selves.

And also we're all praying together.

5) I'm grateful Adam is coming home today.

6) I'm grateful to be a teacher.  It knocks me all the way flat sometimes and can be so hard, but it can also be wonderful and exhilarating.  We didn't have a nines skip counting song, because I thought the nines trick makes it unnecessary.  They wanted one though, so I made up one to jingle bells.  Yesterday I gave children jingle bells and they rang them in chaos and we sang the nines skip counting song for all we were worth and it was fun.  Later, we read a story about people getting ideas from nature and they were shocked by the story of someone getting an idea from shipworms for building a tunnel under a river.  It led to all kinds of discussions about why you would want to build a tunnel under a river.  We talked about the Chunnel and I ended up showing them pictures and we were miles off track, but it was a lot of fun.

Yesterday during "Brain Bins" time, a student was building with magna tiles on my desk.  She likes to be close.  I gave her an idea and she said, "I know you're trying, but that won't work."

I appreciated her compassion.