Grateful

 I have chemo today, so this is my swan song for the week.  School has been exhausting, but I'm also sad about missing the next two days.  They're a lot of fun even though they are exhausting.

I had my party yesterday.  It was an adopt a puppy party.  I had these stuffed dogs.  Two moms came and helped the students make collars for the puppies with pipe cleaners and beads.  The students decorated houses for their puppies.  I was so busy folding houses and hearing about puppies, I only got this one picture:

The kids LOVED it.  We "coincidentally" earned the reward they had been working for for popcorn and a movie, so after they were finished with their houses, we watched a 30 minute movie on Disney Plus and they at popcorn.  It was a good time.

Earlier in the day, one of them who is barely verbal threw his arms around me and said in his tiny voice, "Love...you!"

In moments like that, I would do this job for free.

There is a holiday challenge going on and yesterday one of the things was to give an anonymous gift to someone.  Here was Caroline's anonymous gift to me.

We get raffle tickets for our holiday activities which will apparently be entered into a national contest to send two teachers to Tahiti.  (We are all very skeptical if this is true.)

I put Caroline on all my raffle tickets as the teacher I would want to go with.  I am old enough to be her mother, but we have a good time together.

It was the Christmas Sing and I loved seeing my students nervous but rise to the occasion.  I loved how thrilled they were that they could see their parents or grandparents in the audience.

It was a happy time.

Many of my friends said, "Text if you need anything for your class," and "Good luck and rest, rest, rest!"

They make me feel loved and I love them right back.