What is it worth?

We seem to measure everything by it's worth...is it valuable?  Does it serve a purpose?  How much does it cost?  But some of the most important things can not have a price tag attached to them.  I teach six year olds.  Every morning my day starts with hugs.  Those hugs do not have a price tag on them, but their value is incredible.  There are days I could crawl back into bed and cover my head, but those hugs make it better.  Then there are those "AW, HA"  moments!  That moment in time when it all clicks for that child.  If you are a lucky teacher, those moments happen everyday.  When a child understands a concept for the first time and they look at you with total understand, that is the most incredible moment in teaching.

Recently I discovered some hidden pictures of my family.  These pictures are of a generation that is no longer with us.  While to some those pictures are worthless, to me they tell the story of my family.  They are invaluable to me.  I hope that I teach my children to respect their history and that these pictures will someday mean something to them.  And they don't ask "How much is it worth?"

My Students

I teach 6 year olds.  They fill my days with laughter and frustration.  I enjoy listening to their conversations.  Today a little girl was discussing a little boy that is a character.  The little boy is fascinated with Barbies.  He will bring one to school on Fridays for free choice centers.  The little girl was explaining the little girls that play with little boys is a "tomboy." So she decided that a little boy that plays with dolls must be a "tomgirl."  She was so cute in her reasoning.  I just had to laugh. 

Another little girl was telling me that her momma had celebrated a birthday the day before.  I asked her what she had gotten her mother as a present.  She told me that had not gotten her anything.  She then started talking about her mother's age and how she was super old...I laughed and said, "Was she 22?"  She said, "Oh, no, Mrs. M...she looks forty or sixty years old."  I love that to a six year old everyone over the age of 21 is the same "old person."

I love the honesty of this age of children...not enough sleep?  They tell you about the bags under your eyes.  Change your hair color?  Why, it looks bad.  They are very honest.  To bad we teach them to lie.

Proud Mommy

Tonight my children exhibited their lambs at our county livestock shows.  Our county is one of the most competitive in the state...so winning it is a big deal.  This year my two darling children did not just win it, but they dominated it.  My daughter is nine years old, so this is the first year she has been allowed to participate at the county show.  She is an official 4-Her.  She walked into the ring determined to win.  She had Reserve Breed Champion Southdown and Reserve Breed Champion Suffolk...she shined in the ring.  Then her big brother (who is a senior) decided to go out with a bang.  He had Breed Champion Shrop and Breed Champion Cross...then he did something that I have not seen in the eleven years my husband has been teaching in this county happen in the sheep barn and only once in the swine barn...he won Grand and Reserve Grand Champion Lamb.  It was so exciting watching his face light up.  This was the third year in a row that he has won Grand Champion.  He was so excited.  He works so hard, so it was the reward for all of his, his sister's, and his father's hard work.  They work so well as a team and tonight they won as a team.  Then to make my day even more perfect, a lady that I don't really know stopped me as I was walking through the barn.  She wanted to tell me that I had polite, well-behaved children that were a joy to be around.  She informed me that I should be proud of them...I told her I was.  And I am!  I am very blessed to have all three of them in my life!

Praying for Patience

Praying for patience is a scary thought.  I have discovered that each year God places a child in my path that gets on my last nerve.  I use to pray for patience, but I have decided that only makes things worse.  So now I pray for God to show me one thing a day to love about that child.  Collin is a little boy that is my room.  He is larger than the other children.  He lacks the ability to whisper, to control his hands, or to stop and think before talking.  But he makes up for it in having a big heart.  As I started praying for Collin, I noticed my attitude changing.  Now I see that Collin exhibits some symptoms of autism.  His social cues are limited.  He is bright and a great learner.  While I don’t think God changed Collin, He did change my attitude toward Collin.  I look forward to his stories.  I enjoy his random hugs.  And most of all Collin is happier in my room.

Now I am praying for two little girls.  Both are bossy and mean to others, so I am asking for God’s guidance on how to deal with them.  But I am not praying for patience. 

He is in Control!

God leaves you little surprises if you just look.  Today I was running late and felt sick.  About five minutes before I was suppose to leave the house, my mother called asking for me to stop and pick a few items up for her on my way to work.  She was ill and didn't feel like leaving the house.  I told her yes, but realized I was going to be late for work.  I still had my makeup to do and hair to finish.  After hurrying and finishing getting dressed, I ran to the car to make the twenty minute drive to town.  As I entered the city limits, I realized that I had twenty minutes to go to the grocery store, take the items to mom, drive to work, park, get into the building, and sign in at the office.  I knew that I wasn't going to make it.  I called the teacher down the hall and asked for her to cover for me.  She agreed.  I was able to stop at the store, pick up the items and deliver them to my mother within ten minutes.  I then was able to drive to work and make it into the building with five minutes to spare.  As I breathed a sigh of relief, I realized that once again God had a hand in the smallest details of my life.  He arranged for me to miss all the red lights.  He placed the checkout lady at her register.  He opened the path at the store to the items with no traffic.  He arranged for my mother to be waiting at the door for me to shave a few minutes off my time.  God can handle the simpliest of tasks if we just allow him. 

My Son--My Hero

When I started this blog I was excited to see where it led me.  In May, our lives took a drastic turn.  My children and I rode out a tornado in the master bedroom closet.  Our house had major damage that took us all summer to repair.  But the worst was the security that storm took from our lives.  My children are anxious when they see dark rain clouds, I watch the weather with a heavy heart, and my husband still has guilt about being in Illinois when it hit and not with us.  But we have discovered how much we mean to each other.  I learned about the strong, protective son I raised as I watched him throw his body across his little sister to protect her from the falling ceiling. 

 

On the night of the storm I watched my 17 year old turn into the man I knew he would someday be.  He took charge that night.  After he helped rescued nine trapped neighbors from a storm cellar, he began to work on cleaning our home.  He worked for days removing trees, trash, and debris from our home.  He became my hero in so many ways.  I had always been proud of him, but now I was proud of the man he is becoming.  Until his father returned home, he was the man of the house.  He learned skills and applied skills his father had taught him, but he had never used.  I watched him care for and assist our older neighbors as they worked to clean their yards and homes.  He willing volunteered to help them.  He didn’t complain, he just did what needed to be done.  My son is my hero.

May 24th Tornado

It was a beautiful Oklahoma day.  It was the first day of summer vacation.  We were enjoying our freedom from school and just being lazy.  The television was on satellite channel.  My husband was in Chicago on a business trip.  The phone started ringing.  My husband was getting phone calls and texts from friends that were worried about us.  Before we knew what was happening, sirens were going off and the police were going door-to-door telling people to go below ground and to take cover.  We don't have a cellar, so I placed the kids in the master bedroom closet with pillows and quilts.  Within 15 minutes the electricity was off, and the sky darkened.  Then a whistling sound started.  My 17 year old son threw himself over my 8 year old daughter.  She had on her bicycle helmet and rain boots.  I threw myself onto my son.  As we were huddled together in a pile, we heard the roof lifting off the house and dropping back down.  You could hear the trees hitting the house and the shingles flying off.  The roof sounded like a deck of cards being shuffled.  The wind sounded like a train whistle.  As the wind died down, the limbs continued to hit the house.  After ten or fifteen minutes of deadly silence, I slowly opened the door and crawled out of the closet.  I made my way across the floor to the closest window.

As I opened the blinds, I was unprepared for what I would see.  We live on an acreage that is covered with trees.  That is the only reason we were interesting in purchasing it was because it made us feel like we had our own little farm.  Trees were uprooted, missing tops, broken in half, and generally destroyed.  As my teenager and I left my daughter and went outside to inspect the damage, we were met with total destruction.  My roof was missing in places.  Trees that were four feet around were pulled out of the ground and laying on the fence.  A two inch drilling pipe fence was bent into "v's" in five places.  My chainlink fence was bent at the ground lying on its side.

My son went to the road to check on neighbors.  Jerry, our neighbor across the street, was missing.  We quickly formed a search party.  Another neighbor remembered that our neighbor, Mike, had a cellar.  We started looking for it.  As Dennis walked across the yard, he climbed onto a pile of tree limbs to look around.  He heard screams and pounding and realized that he was standing on top of two trees that had fallen on top of the cellar door.  I yelled for my son to help.  He deadlifts over 500 lbs in competitions.  He couldn't even move those trees.  He went running for a tractor.  He heard a backhoe coming down the road clearing trees.  He waved the man down and had him pull the trees off the door.  One by one my neighbors crawled out.  They had survived a tornado and being buried alive.  There were nine people, six dogs, and a cat in that cellar.  Right before climbing in, my neighbor, Terri, had called my cell phone to find out if we were home.  The call did not go through.  God wanted my family to be out of that cellar so that we could look for her family.

God was watching out for my family.  He had His hand on us in that closet.  I have thanked Him several times for sparing my children.  Unfortunately there were parents in Oklahoma that day that lost their children.  I was a lucky mother.