The Color of My Life

Chad and I had a FABULOUS ;) time in Georgia for Thanksgiving. Oh my goodness I loved it. Jessi and Audra both spoiled us so much and it was so much fun to be with family. So as you can imagine, I was not one bit happy to have to leave on Monday. But on the morning of our departure, we went to the book store to buy some books for our journey home, and I was blessed to find the perfect book! It was just what I needed to pick me up and push me on my way to a better attitude about my life.

It was "The Giver" by Lois Lowry. I loved it so much and I've been thinking about it all week. I don't want to spoil it for those who haven't read it, so I won't say much about it, only that it totally inspired me to look for the good in my life. After reading it I thought, "What gives the color to my life? What are the special moments of life that I should be savoring and rejoicing in?" And a flood of happy memories from my work at KinderCare came to me, and I jotted them down quickly. That really helped me feel more positive about going back to work. I thought I should record them in more detail, so here they are:

T*'s passion of finding, catching, and studying bugs. She loves them so much that at the beginning of the school year, there were several occasions when she could not stop crying because a bug was over the fence and she couldn't get it to come over to her, A* caught a bug that she thought was hers, etc, etc. It became so bad that I told her she could only look for and catch bugs if she promised not to cry over them. So whenever she started crying over them, I'd remind her that she wouldn't be able to look for bugs if she was going to cry. I cannot tell you how cute it was to see her little courageous spirit immediately compose herself, calm down, and deal with her conflict without crying. I wonder if God looks down on my problems like I've looked at T*'s bug catching problems, and I pray I am as courageous as T* is.

M* has the most outlandish stories! Almost every day, he tell me something that is untrue to try to impress me. He's lived in Germany, had a pet tiger, and his dad was bitten by a scorpoin and a spider at the same time! Man I love that kid.

Those success moments when my kids who have anger management issues handle difficult situations in appropriate and pro-social ways. In those moments I can almost hear the "Halelujah Chorus" being sung in the heavens (or at least in my mind! :) ).

During the summer every Friday was water day--the kids get in their swimsuits, fill squirt bottles up with water, and play around a water-spraying toy on the lawn. On a couple different water days this summer our water-spraying-toy was broken, and so I took the hose and sprayed the kids. The squeals of delight, the looks of surprise when the water hit them, the kids trying to get back at me with their water bottles: those are some memories I'll treasure during the cold winter days coming up.

Playing chess with B*! That was definitely one of my favorite activities during the summer. I love that kid so much, and chess sure did bring out the best of him. I love the memory of the first time he said "Check!" to me in jest. I was like, "What! How?" He got me good that time, and I think it was the last he did, too. Another time when he took one of my bishops, and I totally didn't see it coming! I was planning a good move with it, and so I said, "Oh, sad!!" He looked at me with a concerned face and said, "Don't be sad, Ms. Abbi, it's just a game."

I love to hear my kids use the term "team player." I'll praise my kids for being a team player when they are helpful to their friends, pick up toys they didn't play with, help out around the classroom, etc. So it's so funny to hear my kindergartners say to me, "Ms. Abbi, look, I'm being a team player!" or "Ms, Abbi, G*'s not being a team player!" :)

A few times when I've been sitting on the carpet with my class, teaching them something or another, they've all collectively decided out of the blue to give me a group hug. Those are sweet moments.

During October my schoolagers got it in their mind to make a haunted house out of the jungle gym in our playground. They absolutely loved being scarers and being scared, and they would scream and scream and scream. Eventually it got to the point that it was just too much screaming to sound good, so I told them they couldn't play it any more because it sounded like somebody was getting hurt. So what did their creative little minds do? They said, "All right Ms. Abbi, we'll change it to a Laughing House!" All the scarers were transformed into clowns and the visitors enjoyed their role of laughing as they had screaming. Then in November when Thanksgiving was around the corner, they made a "Turkey House." It was so funny seeing those kids walk around the playground pretending they were turkeys shouting, "Come to the Turkey House, gobble, gobble, gobble" over and over again. Needless to say, the Turkey House didn't last near as long as the haunted house had, but boy was it funny while it lasted.

During the summer on one particularly hard day, two of my kids, A* and A*, cleaned up the whole classroom before snack when everyone else was choosing to ignore me and not pick up their areas. I was so pleased and grateful that these two kids did this without even being asked, that I publicly thanked them and told them I would get them their favorite candy bar for it. Well, for the next two weeks, D*, A*'s brother, was constantly doing things to be helpful around the class and telling me, "Ms. Abbi, look what I'm doing! And my favorite kind of candy is a Nerd's Rope. You can get it at the Dollar Tree. Do you know where the Dollar Tree is?" And every day he'd remind me to pick one up for him. He was so persistent! So of course I got one for him. The day D* and A* stopped coming to KinderCare was definitely a sad one for me, I loved those boys.

On Halloween, C* trick or treated at my house. Her mom works at my KinderCare, and so I knew that they lived really close to me and told them they should trick or treat in my neighborhood. C* has been one of my more difficult students, but I'll tell you, there was no kid that I was more thrilled to see than her that night. It's really true, those you serve you love.

Playing soccer, bouncy ball, and basketball with one of my schoolagers J*. I could tell it made him so happy to play ball with me, and I'll tell you, a happy J* is rare indeed.

B* and A* (both girls) were playing police and robbers with T* (a boy). The girls were the robbers and the boy was the police. Basically, the girls were playing chase and the boy was playing police. A* has a crush on T*, and she also happens to be very fast and athletic. It was so funny watching them play, because T* kept catching B* and taking her back to the "police station," because B* was slower and thus easier to catch. A*'s face kept getting more and more jealous and frustrated when T* would kept only catching B*! The poor girl didn't get that it was just because she was faster--she seemed to think T* was preferrentially choosing B*. Oh young love! (I've found it's mostly from the girl's point of view, and the boys are oblivious.)

And this last memory is one of my very most treasured. In mid to late November, we had some beautiful warm sunny days. On one of these days the sun was out and there was a slight wind gently blowing from the west. There are a whole bunch of desiduous trees to the west of us, and it seemed the wind was carrying all of their leaves down to us as a gift. All the leaves were dancing down towards us, a parade of falling leaves. All the kids and I stood on the lawn for quite some time trying to catch them. The leaves were so quick and hard to catch, but there were so many of them, if you just put your hand up for a while, eventually a leaf would fall into it. It was the neatest experience, like a little moment of magic. Of course all the kids were absolutely delighted, and I felt like a kid again. I love how my job ages me and keeps me young all at the same time.