Day # Packet-Pickups...and other life stories!

My favorite new shirt from a dear friend! 

                   School Work!

Worm Hunting! 

Six feet apart...but smiling! 

Sunshine! Glorious Sunshine! This morning dawned bright and cheery, and in spite of not having power this morning, the sunshine was beautiful!

Roger was scheduled to work today, and we are very thankful that he is still able to be working. Times are hard for so many families, and we are thankful that God continues to provide for our needs. He is so very faithful!

We did not get our power back until around noon time today, so this morning we were running on our generator again. I am thankful for the generator...did I mention that yet?!  It was a crazy morning as we tried to use the hotspot on my phone to connect to several different google meets! We managed to hook up my iPad to the hotspot, but we couldn’t get the computer to connect. Garett made it to his google meet on time, but Emma missed her classroom meet this morning. We weren’t the only ones that were having technical difficulty, and it is what it is!

The school packet pickups were originally scheduled for yesterday, but due to rain and wind, the packet pickup was moved to today. Today was a much better day for standing outside and handing out packets! Because Friday was Good Friday, and today was originally the packet pick up, the kids had all their schoolwork done. So they’ve actually had a few days off of school- mom was probably more excited than they were about no school! When I went to check all the kids packets, I realized that Chandler had missed some math assignments. It was a matter of not counting correctly as he thought he would need to do one math paper a day, but there was more than one math paper that needed to be done per day. Thankfully, his teacher was very gracious about his mistake, and we will do better going forward.

I was excited about packet pick up today because it meant that I would get to see people! Hooray! I’ve enjoyed praying with the staff on the phone, but face to face meetings are always best. I’ve missed our preschoolers and their families, so I was looking forward to just a wave and a smile. I am thankful that our kids are old enough to leave at home for short periods of time. We met as a staff to pray at 2:30, and packet pick up began at three. It’s very humbling, encouraging and uplifting to hear eight staff ladies lift their voices in prayer to the King as we ask for Him to give us wisdom, watch over our students, uphold the parents, and to heal our land. While it often seems like our prayers aren’t being answered, I have to trust that God sees the bigger picture. For today, we just do the next right thing...packets for our students and lots of prayer!

While the spirit of the parents in the pickup line was positive, I did see a some tears and watery smiles. This is hard for everyone, and the novelty of “at-home” learning has worn off. Our parents are also weary and concerned, and sometimes it’s hard to be “bright and shiny”! I’m thankful that God is never caught off guard by our emotions, but instead He whispers, “Come unto me”.

One of our teachers made masks for each of the staff. But there weren’t quite enough for everyone. I quickly volunteered to go without a mask. I told Renee that she had to wear the last one because she was the teacher and I’m just the aide!  Don’t tell anyone, but I was secretly glad that I didn’t have to wear a mask. Something about it makes me claustrophobic, and I feel like I can’t breathe. Clearly, you can breathe through a mask, but my heart rate increases just thinking about putting something over my mouth and nose.

So now we have fresh school packets, and back to “at-home” learning we will go tomorrow!

Maine news: Our governor extended the “state of emergency” for our state until May 15th. I could’ve actually cried as it’s so discouraging! We are still two weeks out from the end of April, and already we have an extension! Ugh! It is what it is! Onward we go! We are up to over 700 cases of corona in Maine. We have 734 cases, and one additional death has been reported. So, we continue to pray. We continue to try to wait patiently.