What a Year (so far) It Has Been!

It was not my intention to let this amount of time pass by. I will blame it on the 9 to 5 that takes most of my time. Maybe I ought to talk a bit about that thing that has seemingly consumed most of my life. I am a elementary school librarian. I have served in several districts and schools. My first job was in Green River High School. I was working there my first year when I met my husband to be, Dan.

Living and working in Wyoming was the catalyst for the rest of my life. I only worked at the high school for two years because Dan and I decided that I would stay home with our first child, Tommy. It was an easy decision and yet, it was difficult. It was easy because I wanted to be a stay at home mom. It was hard because of decreased income. With the Lord's help, we did it. Danielle came two and a half years later. I dabbled in writing as well as a few other things. Then came the decision to move to Tennessee. That is a long and complicated story that I won't go into now, but we had friends there so it wasn't like we just picked a spot at random.

It was quickly apparent in Tennessee that I needed to go back to work. Then, as now, I was the more hire-able and within 6 months I had begun my journey as a Tennessee public school librarian. Etowah City School, Niota Elementary School (my longest tenure), Birchwood Elementary School (my favorite assignment) and East Ridge Elementary School (my current assignment). To my astonishment when I did the math, I have worked for 31 years. I have a couple more left before I can retire, but I had no thought when I started in this path, that I would spend this much time in Library. I have been blessed at critical times and strengthened to be able to do the best that I can. As to the explanation about how time consuming my personal 9 to 5 is, let's just say that when an elementary school has over 1000 children, K-5, it's more like 7 to 5.

Anyway, here is the address if you are curious to see what an elementary with more than 1000 students looks like.   http://ere.hcde.org/

And here are a couple of pictures of what I do when not at work!

Reading Pete the Cat to my grandson during a visit this summer. 

Grandpa loving on the youngest grandchild in September. 

Me and author Jackie Mims Hopkins at a librarians' conference in October. Great fun!