Outside The Box Thinkers And More Thankfuls

It's only the end of February, and my daughter has enrolled for her junior year in high school (gulp!) and my son has signed up for next year's housing (upgrading from the honors dorm to a university owned apartment-type building for upper classmen). Spring Break is a mere two weeks away, yet it is snowing and bitterly cold outside. Gahhhhh!!! Find the thankfuls, find the thankfuls, find the thankfuls....

1. My dad passed his eye test and got his driver's license renewed. He had been sidelined after the poor timing of his cataract surgeries and the date his license expired in December collided head on. He not only passed the test, he did it without wearing glasses at all. Yay, Daddy!

2. I borrowed my dad's Sequoia to drive to Nashville in December, and since he couldn't drive it anyway, I just kind of kept it until last weekend. (I was doing a service for my mom, who gets irritated because it takes up so much room in the garage that she can't get to HER car.) Giving it back kind of sucked, because it was really fun to drive, but I told him we would bring it to him last weekend when we went to a show choir competition in my parents' home town. "We" meant me and my 16 year old, newly licensed daughter. Whom I let drive our car and follow me on the hour drive to my parents' house. When she had never driven by herself on a highway. I may have spent more time looking in the rear view mirror at her than I did looking forward at where I was going, but she did a great job, kept the car between the ditches, and didn't do anything that scared me (that I noticed).

3. Not to be a big sissy or anything, but this is the first 5 day week I've worked in several weeks, and I made it to the end, reasonably unscathed.

4. Our snack helper in Pre-K this week brought Dude's Doughnuts on Friday for snack. It doesn't get much better than that.

5. Even on days when my preschoolers are wound up and completely crazy and I think I might run screaming out of the room, they say and do things that are so completely amazing that I can't believe I get to work with these little people every day.

Playdough snails. From 1/2" high on up.

They built a kitchen. With a grill to
cook the fish they catch.

Example: I took construction paper hearts, about 4 inches across, wrote each child's name on one, then cut them apart into puzzle pieces. The plan was to have each child put the pieces back together and end up with their name on a heart (the other pre-k teacher did this project with her class, so shout out to Miss Debbie for the great idea). My directions to the class, in fact, were to put the pieces together to make a heart by putting the letters in their name in order. (I kind of didn't realize that Miss Debbie made one of the hearts as an example for her class; I just gave each kid their own cut up heart and told them to put it back together without any further direction in how to do it, bless their little hearts.) 

Here is one finished product:

Most of them did very well. Some of the younger ones in the class struggled a little, but they finally got the pieces together so that their name was there, even though some of the pieces were upside down and didn't get back into the heart shape. But one boy kept working and working on his heart name, but wasn't getting it put together right at all. I finally told him to go ahead and glue what he had down on a piece of paper, which he did. When I hung them up in the hallway later and got a good look at his, this is what I found:

It's a heart shape, with the letters in his name in order, just like I asked. He did exactly what I told him to do. You could say he did it the hard way, and he did labor over it, but if this isn't the ultimate example of problem solving, I don't know what is. He's going to do great in this big world!

Another example: After snack, we have mandatory bathroom time. I walk between the boys and girls bathrooms to keep an eye on them (i.e., tell them to quit playing, help when it's hard to get the faucet turned on, snap jeans back together). Remember how I said we had doughnuts for snack? Glazed doughnuts. While I was standing between the two bathrooms, another teacher was walking down the hall. She glanced in the open doorway of the boys bathroom, stopped, then, grinning, told me to look in.

There stood one of my boys, his back to the door, washing his hands, with his pants pulled down, his bare bottom shining. Thinking he might have forgotten to pull his pants all the way up (hey, it happens when you're 5), I asked him if he was doing okay.

"Yes, I'm just washing the doughnut off my fingers before I pull my pants up."

See? I have outside the box thinkers!

6. The last one counts as two.

7. It's unbelievably cold this week. Stupid cold. That means I got the minkrat out! I still don't have a full length picture of myself in it, but I got enough of one that you can see the luxurious fur synthetic fuzzy fabric. The cold doesn't penetrate this coat, but when you wear it, you draw a lot of attention to yourself, especially when parading through Walmart.

8. I had a great visit with Kristi of Thankful Me the other night on Facebook. We chatted back and forth for two hours, talking about one-eyed cats and dead hamsters and puppies and stuff. I am very grateful for blog friendships!

9. Ruby and I had a rousing game of fetch this evening with a twist tie. She hasn't played fetch in months, choosing, rather, to play by herself by dropping toys and trash she fished out of the trashcan into my husband's shoes. She brought me her latest favorite twist tie as I sat in my chair and fetched it about twenty times when I tossed it for her. She only quit playing when she dropped the twist tie somewhere behind the chair and couldn't find it.

10. It's Friday night and NO ONE HAS TO BE ANYWHERE. We are home and warm and cozy. Hope you are, too, and if you ARE somewhere having some kind of heat wave, then just keep it to yourself.

Link up your thankfuls! It's too cold to do anything else, anyway.

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