Open House.

So tonight at school we had our open house. Normally this is not very thrilling for me, seeing how you're already exhausted from being at school all day, then you have to stay EXTRA late, look nice, and paste a smile on your face telling the parents how wonderful their child is doing. With some this is true, with others it is not. However, I am estatic to report that tonight I did not have to past any smiles on my face tonight :0) Want to know why? Because of my last years kids!

Several of them, with their parents, dropped by my room, just to say hi and give me a big hug! This made me soooo happy! No kidding, just seeing these kids makes my day like you have no idea!

I was of course the most excited to see my Braden! :0) He came in and gave me one of his famous hugs and I got to see his older brother Dillon and his dad Bobby. We talked for a little while and then the boys went around investigating my room. Last week when the parents were able to come up and see what teacher their child got, I ran into Shelle, Braden's mom. I told her who Braden had and we were talking about his class. Braden, Dillon, and Bobby were all out fishing, so they didn't get to come to meet the teacher; hence, why Shelle came up to check everything out. While we were talking, the boys called her to find out what teacher they got. Bobby told me tonight that after Braden found out that Shelle had been talking to me, he wanted to call me back and talk to me! He said, "Well even though I wasn't there, I could have hugged her through the phone!" Haha..have I said yet how much I love this kid?

Bobby went on to thank me for what all I had invested in Braden. He said that he can tell how much he has grown up and changed and that they appreciated all I had done. Believe me, I about lost it right then and there. Later when they were leaving, Braden came up and gave me another big hug, and while he was hugging me, he asked Braden if he had gotten his "Miss Snodgrass fix"! I was thinking well I need to get my Braden fix! They went on down the kindergarten hall to visit Mrs. Wood, Dillion's old teacher.

A few minutes later, I went back to cutting things out at my desk when suddenly I looked up and saw Braden come back in my room! He sneeked back down while his dad and Dillion were in Mrs. Wood's room and came up and gave me another hug. I told him that I missed him and that I thought he should come back to kindergarten. He looked at me with a puzzled look on his face and said, "but I'm already in first grade!" I said, "oh that's ok! I'm sure if you ask Mrs. Pine, she'll let you come back to my class! I really need you to come back so you can teach my class how to behave correctly!" He just looked at me and gave me his Braden laugh=precious. We just sat and talked about my class and his class and who I knew in his class that was getting in trouble, etc, etc. It was awesome. Man I miss that kid! Later, Dillion came back into my room, so it was just the three of us all hanging out! When Bobby came back down there, Braden was like, "Dad, Miss Snodgrass wants me to come back to kindergarten!" with this big grin on his face. Bobby said, "Yeah I bet if you just batted your eyelashes at Mrs. Pine she'd say yes!" Then we all just talked about football.

Man, it was a good night :0)

One thing that I realized tonight was that if you give your students a reason to come back to you..they will :0)