Tuesday in Atlanta

Before our arrival, Grandmom and Pop-Pops (temporarily) converted their garage to a play and school room! They even laid down new carpet. So generous a gift to us!

The play and school room

I planned and packed up our school for the week and placed it in a bin with all the items to be loaded in the van. But the movers arrived Monday morning and efficiently moved away all the furniture for refinishing the floors. They also moved all my items to be loaded in the car. Some I noticed right away and retrieved--like the bin of road snacks--but some I didn't notice till it was too late and we were in Atlanta--like the school bin!

I thought of Bl. Mother Theresa of Calcutta teaching her first students in the ghetto using a stick in the dirt: Surely I could come up with school on the fly! I did my best, but the week got busy and school ended up mostly being reading them literature and letting them do some great Preschool and Kindergarten workbooks Grandmom had bought.

Four sweeties

Our drama of the day was the latest injury of who do you ask? Mary, good guess!

Earlier in the day, I had supervised the children riding bicycles on the parking pad and driveway. I noticed that John was skilled enough to manage his bike down the long and very steep driveway, but not Mary so I instructed her that she wasn't allowed to ride her bike down the driveway. Later in the afternoon, the children went back outside to ride bikes in the cul-de-sac with two neighborhood children. There were four adults supervising, two of whom stood guard at the top of the driveway, which descends very steeply and at length to the parking pad below. But accidents can happen even in the best of circumstances.

Little Mary was riding in circles around the cul-de-sac when she busted through the safety guards and began peddling with all her might down the driveway (as if she weren't going fast enough already from her momentum around the cul-de-sac). Chris was quite shaken up to watch his sweet girl start to wobble on her bike and he knew disaster was imminent but there was no way he could rush to save her. We thanked her guardian angel that she didn't crash into one of the cars parked at the bottom.

Mary ditched her bike (wearing her helmet) and got fairly deep scrapes on both knees and swaths of road rash on her two forearms, one ankle, one shoulder, and one palm of her hand. I got my first lesson in serious bandaging, having never before needed more than a simple Band-Aid.