Grateful Friday

I'm grateful it is my parents' 50th wedding anniversary today.  That's a big deal!  I wish we could celebrate with a big party and invite the whole world, but alas.

The scaled back celebration of it doesn't diminish my gratitude though.  I'm grateful for their goodness and their eternal marriage and the family they created.

Speaking of my parents, I got my rings back!

My dad is, and always has been, my hero!  I feel like all is right with the world again.

***

I'm grateful for the sweet slideshow our kids made us earlier this week:  25 things we love about you, complete with pictures.  

I'm grateful that when Braeden talked about temple marriage he got teary talking about how much he loves Anna.

I love how much he loves her.

***

I'm grateful my classroom is shaping up.  I really have a sort of neutral, monochromatic thing going on I think....

It's subtle.

There's evidence of protection against the virus everywhere.  Last year, the reading books all lived together on the same shelf and kids just grabbed one, any one.  This year they are isolated from each other and the bins will be labeled.  Communal school supplies are boxed up and there's no longer a sharp pencil and dull pencil cup where they can exchange their pencils and we sharpen up all the dull ones once a day.  They're going to have their own (labeled) pencils.

I now have a paper towel dispenser and a hand sanitizer dispenser mounted on classroom walls.  (And soon I'll have a hand sanitizer stain on the carpet.  I know how it will go.)

It all makes me feel a little stressed.

I feel the responsibility parents place on me when they send their precious children my way.  I know they are hoping I'll be kind and understanding and competent and that their children will be loved and that they will learn.  

It's a lot of responsibility.  

Now I feel like keep them safe is heaped on top and I'm staggering a little under the weight.  I'll do my best.

I'm a mix of excited and terrified and I am hoping that somewhere along the way I can figure out how to be a person as well as a teacher.  (Last year it kind of felt like I could only do one or the other.)

But this post is supposed to be about gratitude so let me circle back around.

I am grateful to be a teacher.  I truly love it.  My classroom--the colorful chaotic place that it is--is a happy place for me to be.  I look at my future students' faces on Skyward and I feel a jolt of excitement.  They will become dear to me in the coming months.  I will listen to their stories and tie their shoes and put band-aids on all kinds of real and imagined injuries.

And they will become mine--if only in my mind.

I'm grateful I get to do what I love.