And yet, routine doesn't ever seem to equal boring around here. In fact, I had a little bit of excitement at work yesterday. Central Arkansas had some tornado-type activity and was under tornado "warnings" and "watches" at various times throughout the day. Not uncommon around here. Typically, we turn on the TV/radio, check how close it is, keep an occasional watch on it and go on with everyday life. However, yesterday I happened to be at one of my elementary schools instead of at home and that's not exactly how things go when you're working with almost 600 students in grades K-4. I was seeing one of my third graders when the principal came over the intercom and said that everyone needed to go to their designated places for "tornado procedures". Not knowing what my designated place was, we headed toward his classroom hoping to just follow his class. Unfortunately, they were already gone, so we went into the closest "approved" place - the computer lab. There were four other classes in there, which meant almost 90 students crammed under computer lab tables with their faces to the wall. Amazingly, they did a great job and were quiet just liked the teachers requested...for about the first five minutes. Following that, there started to be little whispers. One in particular caught my attention. A first grade boy repeatedly whispered, "we're going to die, we're going to die!". I turned to offer my calm assurance that we were actually okay and just taking necessary precautions, only to see that he wasn't actually scared. He was simply tormenting the kindergarten girl squatted beside him. So instead, he got my mean teacher glare. Shortly after, one of the students across the room decided that it was the appropriate place (hunched under a table, surrounded by other students, in a room with no ventilation) to pass some gas. I'll leave the reaction of the other 89 kindergarten, first and third graders to your imagination. Then, the complaining started... "it's too hot (which it was), his breath stinks (it did), my neck hurts (which I'm sure was true for the 120 pound 3rd grader huddled under the short table)" and on and on and on. Finally, after THIRTY minutes, someone sitting comfortably in the central office decided that the "slight rotations which had weakened considerably" were safe enough for us to return to the classrooms. I think next time I'm going to drop my child off in the "safe place" and then take my chances with the tornado!!
On a totally different note, returning to a routine has meant that we get Jenna back! For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, on Wednesdays and Thursdays Madigan's friend Jenna comes over to stay with us (and her mom watches the two of them on two of my work days). Today was her first day back with us after the holidays and Madigan was elated! They play so good to together - I don't know how I'd get laundry done if it wasn't for their playtime! Here's a picture of them playing and reading together on the new Princess couch/bed today (a wonderful hand-me-down from cousins Avery and Ella).
And last but not least, remember all of those pictures that your parents have of you that you can't believe they 1)ever took, 2)kept after developing, and 3)would show people (especially people you were interested in dating)? Mine was a picture of me about Madigan's age standing up wearing my dad's cowboy boots...and nothing else. How humiliating! Well, apparently this isn't going to be one of those things I say, "I'll never do ______ like my parents did" because here's one for Madigan. She found these glasses in some other hand-me-down toys from her cousins and well...
I'm going to leave you with that! Have a great day!
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