The view from our backyard of our new home up near Georgetown/Liberty Hill.
Have you ever experienced the Space Mountain ride at Disneyland? Loop after loop and just when you thought it would level out and the ride was over, it would swing you around again, in the dark where you couldn’t see the next turn. Sound a little deja vu-ey? Life has been quite the ride lately. Highs and lows, good and bad, stressful and…tearful, but the positive kind. The joyful kind. Change isn’t always negative.
What’s a little different about my stressors is that I CHOSE to fold some of it into my life. So in no particular order, allow me to pull back the curtain a smidge so you can view the craziness of my life these past few months.
We Moved (And then adopted a kitten!)
We built a house out in the country, which was ready to move into in mid-May, which naturally necessitated selling our old house in the ‘burbs, which meant our cat, Ginny, who was used to being able to hang outside when she wanted was now a “forever indoor” cat, which meant we naturally had to adopt a kitten we named Zeppy to keep her company. It’s taken a bit of time, but two weeks later, they are playing together. I don’t recommend selling a house, moving and adopting a pet while Covid is paying a visit, but we got through it just fine.
Our Numbers Took a Nose Dive (but rebounded!)
So between both Sunrise locations, we had about 270 children enrolled in early March. In April, it was down to 68 and over half our team was receiving unemployment benefits. Not seeing our parents grace the hallways and passing by empty classrooms was tough enough. Losing our team was heartbreaking. Thankfully, time went by and as I write this, we are up to 186 students and almost all of our team have returned! While our teachers were gone, we made sure to keep in touch with them with silly interactive daily games, like asking them to stack whatever food they had at home as high as they could or dressing up their pet, and then we would share their picture antics with our entire team. Our working teachers also showed their spirit every week with Crazy Hair or Rad ‘80s outfits on Fridays. The change in our team numbers may have been a downer, yet we decided that what was going on in the world wasn’t going to dampen our team spirit! We made it work and it brought us closer as we waited impatiently to rehire them.
My Son Yearned for More Independence (while I strongly prayed for a pedicure)
John is 16 and desperately wanted a job. He had one at Jack in the Box before we moved, but was forced to quit (drive was too far) and was struggling to find a new one. The stress at home was building (and here I thought trying to get him through distance learning was the ultimate in parental and teen torture). I asked one of our teachers, Ms. Tiffany of our Butterflies Class, who is training to one day become an Assistant Director (don’t worry, parents, not for another couple years), to perform a mock interview to help him work out what to say when asked the hard questions and poof! He finally was offered a job! The logo here should give you a clue where. (He’s at the location near IKEA starting next week!) And as for my toes, my husband, Rob, took care of that himself. 😉 What I loved most about the “curve ball” questions I asked her to come up with for my son was the one that required “Order 66” for an answer. (I am not the only sci fi nerd at Sunrise.) 😉
Life is a wild trip sometimes. The thread in the tapestry of the past three months is quite eclectic and vibrant. I don’t recommend too much stress at once nor do I want to experience Sheltering in Place ever again, I feel like I’ve aged at least 3 years in the past 3 months, though as I look back, even with all the ugliness that Covid brought, I see a lot of growth, a lot of newfound pride in my team and family, and a new playbook for when things go south. The grit on the soles of my feet are thicker, my belief in others deeper. Not bad all in all for some serious turbulence. With how well things have worked out so far, I’m pretty sure John will appreciate his new shower curtain I just hung. But with teenagers, as with life, you just never know. 😉
Sunrise Montessori Preschool has two locations in Round Rock. Interested in learning first hand what we can offer your child? Then book a tour on our website at Sunrise-Montessori.com or call us so you can discover why Sunrise Montessori Preschool is where YOUR family belongs!
