Another year of lasts

Tuesday night brought a couple of challenges to our home.  Julia had her last intramural opportunity to cheer for a varsity basketball game. I have a new commitment on Tuesday nights that was to start that night, and Julia's temperature was 101 on Monday night.  She was crushed.  We kept her home on Tuesday, but the fever was gone on Tuesday morning, and she felt better by lunchtime.  Normally, an evening event under such circumstances would have been a no go.  I work in a school and don't like it when sick kids arrive and share their germs. I have a brother whose immunity to illness is compromised.  I remember very well how mad my mom got when she would read about all the kids who had 12 or 13 years of perfect attendance and how they pushed through illness in order to be in school.  Great for them, but exposing my brother meant the loss of work time, prolonged suffering, extra expense, and extra time off of school as normal illnesses often put him in the hospital.  So, I get it.  We don't send sick kids to school.

However, this was a BIG deal to Julia, and she had just come from cheer practice when the fever struck, so her entire team had already been exposed.  So we let her go.  To my knowledge nobody else got sick.

These two have stuck it out since the first year.  They are great friends.

We are really wrestling with whether Julia can stay at this school she loves next year.  She's disappointed because Wyatt and Savannah will likely stay.  It hurts to be the only one asked to sacrifice for the family.  It's hard on all of us.  We are hanging on to every moment of this last year of elementary school.