This week I’m thankful for…

• laying in bed Saturday mornings
• my Ugandan kids who are teaching me to speak and write Acoli
• Pretzels dipped in Nutella
• the 7th grader (who is one of my former little ones) who sought me out to tell me she’s proud of the work I’m doing in Uganda
• the trace of my husband’s cologne on our blankets
• weird, but beautiful 80 degree weather in January
• the kids at my school who are doing acts of kindness and accepting donations for Uganda, specifically the little girl who donated her tooth fairy money and the little boy who takes his elderly neighbor’s trash cans in each week for a quarter per can and then donates his quarters
• this last bit of Mary Oliver’s Summer Day:

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the field,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

• my one wild and precious life