Grateful Friday

 I need the counterweight of gratitude.  When Mark has hard health days, like he did yesterday, it is very easy for me to feel discouraged and helpless and frustrated.

I am grateful that I get to be with my family this weekend for our family reunion.  We are going to Nevada and a few will be missing but most will be there.  Braeden and QE are coming, which I'm excited for.  I wish Anna was coming, but she already had plans to go to a conference to help her mom.  

I am grateful for my little class.  Those kids are worming their way into my hearts.  I still welcome the hugs and smiles of my former students too.

A gaggle of girls accosted me with hugs and one of them has this amazing curly hair and they showed me that she had "boing boing hair like Susan."

It was a reference to Ramona, who repeatedly got in trouble for pulling Susan's hair in kindergarten and the fact that they remembered it and had to tell me made me very happy.

I am grateful that the sweet little girl, who has been the line leader this week, slips her hand into mine when we walk down the hall.

I am grateful for the boy who argued with me that he couldn't find his whiteboard when seconds earlier he had slipped it under the rug.  I said, "Get your whiteboard."

He gave me a winning smile and said, "OK, you win this time."

I am grateful that when one boy was sitting on the floor absolutely sobbing at the end of the day, another boy, a very quiet and somber boy, pointed him out to me and then solemnly left the room.

I sat with my sobbing friend and got to the bottom of his distress and dried his tears. 

I am grateful I could buy a big Costco size package of bandaids.  There are no bandaids in the school and third graders spring leaks.

I am grateful for the girl who made me laugh out loud on the way to lunch yesterday when she pointed to a sign in the hall and said, "I've always wondered what these signs say, but I'm not going to waste my learning on reading a sign."

I am grateful for the ways they stop me in my tracks and surprise me.  I was reading a book comparing and contrasting Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy.  

A girl raised her hand and said, "Did you know he cheated on his wife?"

OK.

Yes, but you're eight and what?

I said, "We're not going to talk about that right now."

They keep me on my toes.