D squared + J squared = Anderson

There are several new families and I like listening to them talk because they are seeing things through new glasses, in ways I can’t see things here anymore.  When I heard one Mom talking to another Mom about how many of the students’ water bottles wear socks, I thought to myself and realized, that was different than in our passport country.  For one, students don’t need to take their own water bottles to school because the schools have water fountains, drink options for lunch, vending machines, etc…, but here that doesn’t exist, so it’s necessary for each student to carry a water bottle so he/she can be hydrated.  It’s important that the water bottles wear socks so the condensation doesn’t ruin papers, books, etc… in the student’s backpack and doesn’t leave a water ring on the student’s desk.

Joshua and Jonah have carried water bottles for years with socks wrapped around them and I didn’t think of it as different until now.

In 2008, we were starting our journey to become full-time overseas missionaries.  This hasn’t been easy for a girl like me who clings to mementos.  I grew up in the same small town, the houses I lived in that small town are all within one block from one another.  There are many memories and mementos.  I went to the same school starting in Kindergarten until I graduated.  When we bought our home in Pleasant Hill, I truly thought that would be the home our children would know.  The home they would return come to on weekends to do laundry when they are in college, the home that would store mementos for them.  The Lord had other plans and I soon realized that I needed to come up with a plan B to save mementos.  That’s when I decided to make annual digital school books for the boys and scan their school papers.  These books are just to guard their school paper mementos.  I knew it wouldn’t be possible to travel around the world lugging rubbermaid containers full of their precious art creations, papers, etc…

Fast forward to 2011, Joshua’s 2nd grade year and Jonah’s Kindergarten year just finished and I wanted to start their annual books.  I scanned their papers, saved the few I just couldn’t part with even after they were scanned and the rest I placed in a trash bag and threw away.  I didn’t tell the boys that once I scanned them, I didn’t physically save them because that would upset them.

When you go to local boutiques to purchase bread, they wrap the bread in the middle with a piece of paper.

In 2011, after scanning and tossing papers.  I started creating the digital annual book and didn’t think about those tossed papers, until I went to a local boutique to buy bread.  I walked in, asked for two loaves and the bread was wrapped in one of Joshua’s discarded papers.  Joshua was with me and wanted to know why one of his papers were used as bread wrappers.  Note: the picture above is not of Joshua’s paper, it was pictured last week when we purchased bread and it’s a magazine page.

Needless to say, I didn’t throw out the boys papers again and that’s why I emphasize when I teach new arrivals food preparation to always pass their bread over an open flame to kill any germs on the surface of the bread before eating it.  I know at least some of the papers were once in the trash.