Official

It's official! Our new student starts Monday. She and her mom will stop after school Friday to put stuff in her desk/get acclimated. Woohoo! It's definitely a God thing... a few weeks ago, I had just been thinking, "You know, it'd be nice to get a new student in class. It's been a while. I'd like to have one more." And lo and behold, here we are. God is awesome. That's all I can say about that.

Mr. E stopped in right before read-aloud to tell me it was official (while my students were getting their snack, getting a drink/bathroom break). I was so excited I decided to make the announcement right after he left. My face split into a huge smile and I told the students who were in the room, "I have some big news as soon as everyone is back in the room!" They lit up like they'd been jolted with a bolt of electricity and scurried to gather the wandering classmates. Before I could tell them, they tried to guess. One 6th grader shouted, "Are you engaged?!" I waved my empty ring finger at them and they all sagged a bit. "Aww! That was my guess." But they were all really happy when I revealed we'd be getting a new 5th grade girl. The boys were excited and then not as excited when they realized they'd be even more outnumbered... "How come it's never a boy?" one asked. "Why not recruit some? Talk to your friends at Nicollet. See if they want to come here. They could!" His argument was that one guy wouldn't change schools if he only knew one person at this school. My response, "Get like five of them to come!" Then we'd have 16 students. That would be amazing! Except it would be pretty crowded. But we'd make it work.

We had a bit of a crazy day today. This morning was super windy, so chapel ended up being over here at school. My class set up the altar and brought the piano in, except the usual space was taken up by Operation Christmas Child tables/boxes/toys prepped for packing after chapel. So we rapid-fire cleaned the gym equipment out of the corner and pulled the rest of the bleachers out. This is the first time Chapel has been in the gym this year and the first time we've ever had it on the far side of the gym.

Packing boxes was fun. Miss S did a fantastic job setting everything up so it would run smoothly. And the kids had a blast filling their boxes with toys and school supplies and hygiene items (soap, toothbrush, etc.). We packed 51 boxes!

They were pretty wound up after that, and the computers weren't working, and we were SO CLOSE to finishing our read-aloud book, that we ended up reading aloud the whole morning. The climax of the book we're reading is so emotional. And right after that part, there's another even more emotional part. First your mad, then you're scared/sad. Every time I read the second climax, I tear up. (Spoiler alert, the main character's baby sister sneaks out of the house as they're leaving to take her to school and the mom accidentally runs her over... but she's okay. But you don't find that out until later). I had warned them that I might cry while I read the book, which got them all intrigued (and a little excited too... after all, how often does your teacher cry in school?). And yes, I did cry at that part. Half the class did too, so I wasn't alone. It's one of those cases where seeing other people crying makes you cry more. But we got through it and they loved the ending of the book. And now we have to pick a new one to read. I have one in mind, but we're going to wait to start it until Monday so our new student can start it with us.