Thankfulness...

Today has become one of those days where I am truly grateful for the amazing people  that I have in my life. My morning starts out every day by getting ready for work, and getting both children ready to go to the baby sitter. Fortunately I have found an amazing babysitter, or better yet, she found me. She is my first person to be grateful for. Unless you are a parent you really can not understand the stress of leaving a child in someone's care for an extended period of time. Louise is amazing! Not only does she take great care of Alex during the day, but she is also willing to make sure that Aeryn has breakfast and helps her study her spelling words. (The studying of the spelling words has attributed to Aeryn's improvement in spelling this school year.) With Louise doing these things it means that I do not have to stress out as much about getting Aeryn up earlier than she would really need to be.

The second person that I have to be thankful for early in the morning is Inge. A valued coworker who is currently my ride to work until my car gets fixed. She faithfully shows up at the sidewalk in front of my house at 6:30 every morning. I hope she knows how appreciative I am of this as it relieves another amount of stress.

There is a "crew" at work that I am thankful for just because they make me smile. Working in education is a frustrating experience at times. And again, this is a time where unless you also do this, it is really hard to understand. I have developed "go to" people who I know that I can count on to just be able to make me smile when a smile is needed. A real, genuine, eye-crinkling smile. Hopefully these people know who they are as there is a rather large list to name. How often can you go to work every day knowing that you look forward to working with your co workers? I hear over and over again how miserable people are at their jobs, and how they can not stand the people that they work with. I LOVE my job. And for the most part I also love the people that I work with. And the ones that I do not enjoy working with, I just get over it, put on my big girl pants and move on. Thank you Kelsey and Peggy, Sally, Nate and Jen, Jay, Rick and Missie!

Sometimes I make my mom for granted when really I should be thankful for her more than anyone. Take today for instance. My mom has been faithfully picking me up from work every day since my car broke almost a month ago. Today Aeryn has a eye doctor's appointment. Our plan was for mom to pick Alex up from the baby sitter, pick me up from work, go collect Aeryn from school and then go to the appointment. This was all well and good until about twenty minutes ago when I was walking down the hall of the school and it hit me that I am supposed to be tutoring a student after school today until 4:00. After a hurried phone call to mom and my sister Nancy we managed to work out that Mom and Nancy would pick up the kids and take Aeryn to her appointment and then they would come pick me up at school. My mom is always so flexible and willing to help where ever it is needed. And knowing that she is there eases my mind a bit because I know that no matter what is going on my mom has my back.

For a day that would normally loaded with endless amounts of stress, this one really is not so bad. Thank you to all of the people making it possible to smile and be happy at the same time as running around like a chicken with my head cut off. I know that I do not say it enough but you help to make the days sparkle just as much as my Rays of Sunshine do.