I love my job

I know I keep saying this, but I am so happy at work! After 10 months in my position, I feel like I have a lot of stuff figured out and I'm feeling confident in my role. It's a good feeling. If only I could feel like this with all the other parts of my life... :)

But anyhow, I wanted to share two things that made me happy last week. One was when I was reading Eric Carle's book "1, 2, 3 to the Zoo" to my kids. It's a book about animals riding in a train to a zoo. On the first page, 1 elephant is in a train car, on the second page 2 hippos, and so on. The last page is of all the animals at the zoo (1 elephant, 2 hippos, 3 giraffes, etc.)

While looking at this page of the zoo, that same blonde mentioned in my last post asked, "Why is there just a mommy elephant? Why isn't there a daddy elephant?" I said, "That's a good question. What do you think happened to the daddy elephant? Where did he go?" To which another little girl in the class enthusiastically responded, as though very proud to know the answer to the question, "At the office!!"

And the second thing that has made me very happy not just last week but for the last several weeks is what many of my children keep themselves busy with during our outside time. They walk around searching for "flowers" in the grass. These flowers are actually weeds, but if you look close enough, you can see there are tiny little blossoms in them. I would never have noticed all these tiny colorful blossoms, but my children do!

There are white, yellow, pink, and purple "flowers." They pick a handful of these blossoms and then bring them to me, proudly giving me flowers. And I have to say that close up, these blossoms are very pretty! I am so lucky to be given flowers every day! And I try to show my kids how much I appreciate their kindness.

I love how children see beauty all around them. Beauty that most adults overlook, are too busy to notice, or are too practical to appreciate. These flowers have brought so much joy to my life, and I am so grateful for my children for helping me notice and appreciate the beauty around me.