Simpify, Simplify

This school year, I am starting with a few missions, the first of which is family. 

Okay, so how does that look... and what am I talking about?  Here's the deal.  Every year, I LOVE my summer.  It is the best time for me to experience new things, and dig deeper into whatever interests and hobbies I'm into that year.  It's a refreshing, renewing time.  Ever since getting married and starting a family, my summers have been a bit different. 

As most parents know, family generally changes everything.  I love my job, even with the challenges and stresses, but I must say that I felt way better about my job when I was on my own.  Why?  Well, I can admit that my teaching job has a tendency to consume my life in many ways.  I really get into my work with the students and the school.  So, one could imagine that things would be very different when a couple of more pressing priorities enter the life of someone like me.  My family means more to me than my job, yet my job is highly demanding.  There's planning, preparing, the cumbersome act of teaching itself, staff meetings, additional duties toward school improvment, there's the grading piece... so much goes into effective instruction, and it's not all just about the curriculum being taught.  For me, it's about the kids. 

I work with a somewhat disadvantaged population, and I always feel like it is my job to try my best to give them what they need... filling in what's missing, even when I'm not sure what that is.  There are not enough teachers, in my opinion and observation, who still seem to actually care about the kids.  It's easy to forget about them, because they make it seem like they don't want or need anyone's help or support.  I keep trying to remember,"They're just kids, and I was a kid once... one day, my daughter will be in school; how should she be treated?"  This is my fuel.  Teaching is not an easy job if you actually want to make a difference. You get the picture.


Well, anyhow... this year, I have decided it is my mission to help the kids at school at absolutly no cost (or the absolute least cost) to my home life.  This means that I really need to work at it to get things in proper places and keep them there. I am tired of being too tired for everything during 9 months of every year.  So my plan is to simplify everything, not expecting so much of myself at work, and not letting work affect me so much at home. Of course, I have not mentioned how grad courses have also impacted my life at home, but thankfully, this is my last year of that!  Thus, I begin my thought process toward finding simplicity, and enriching life as a result.  Here goes!

Family

I'm sitting here with my family.  We are on the front porch, my husband and I.  He's relaxing, patting his foot to the music coming from my laptop.  I am (or was) working on the last assignment for my summer class (I'll get right back to it, I hope).  Our daughter is playing with her water play table, making 'soup' for her 'friends' out of water and leaves.  I thought to myself, how horrible it would be if I did not pause to notice this blessing... this moment.  It seems small, and it is.  But who said awesome could not be synonymous with simple?  Treasure your blessings, beloved. 

“There is no doubt that it is around the family and the home that all the greatest virtues, the most dominating virtues of human society, are created, strengthened and maintained” ~Winston Churchill

"The family. We were a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another's desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together." ~Erma Bombeck