Second graders, dogs and daughters

Today was a normalish day. After the mad dash for showers and making lunches, we were off. It was picture day at school, so all the second graders came to school in their best clothes and hairdo's. They were spiffy....except for the children of forgetful mothers, who will be very sorry come picture previews when they see their children in stained t-shirts and floppy, askew hair. I did the best I could to primp some of them, but wow, some of them were pretty askew.

I was not one of the forgetful mothers, may I add! Maggie was very pretty with a side part and blown dry hair and a cute outfit!

Yay me!

There was also a pile up on the playground. Three girls came limping and holding their heads (all in very cute outfits, but hair askew) to ask me if they could go to the nurse. None of them were crying, so it was pretty funny and they were laughing too by the time they headed off to get ice packs. I wrote "We had a pile up out here." on the nurse's pass.

Ice packs are a miracle cure. And if you bite a little hole in the corner of it, they are also quite refreshing.

Then I went home. Someone had left my bedroom door open when they left for work (Bethany), so Maisy was sleeping in the middle of the pillows on my bed. I surprised her, so she was extra 'smiley'. She gets a lunatic grin on her face when she is anxious or overcome with joy. If people don't know her, they think she is snarling. But it really is a grin.

I was reminded of when we first got her and she was smiling at us. My daughter reminded me that I had once said that I wanted a dog who smiled at me. It was after seeing Because of Winn Dixie because that dog smiled too.

I think God arranges little things like that in our lives to see if we're paying attention....or maybe just to bless us.

And it is a blessing to come home to a dog who is crazy about you. It makes me laugh every day to see her smiling like a lunatic when I get home.

I also called my college daughter, Hannah, who had her first day on the new job yesterday. She 'shadowed' another worker there all day, a 12 hour day. She came home from work and went right to bed. Poor girl. It is a high turn-over type of job. She will be taking children to have supervised visits with parents they have been taken away from by CPS. She has to supervise the visit, take notes and then turn the notes in to the judge, who monitors the case. Highly stressful job, especially for a compassionate young woman. She loved working with the children, but the parents were stressing her out with their manipulation, emotional neediness and dysfunctional ways. Today she just had to go to a parenting class for an hour, so she is readying herself for another day of shadowing. Please pray for her. She really wants to do this.

I'm off to make the dinner now. Thanks for stopping by. =)