day 254

It's September 11th. This day brings up so many feelings for me and always makes me feel very emotional. I can so clearly remember watching the plane crash into the second tower, seeing people throw themselves out of the windows and the eventual crash of both towers. I was in complete shock. I have never had such a difficult day being a teacher - looking into the nervous eyes of my fourth graders and not breaking down myself was so, so hard. In class today, I read my students a book called September 12th and talked to them about what happened that day, a year before they were born (crazy, huh?!)

After work, Jody, Taylor, Pam and I met up for a beer at Oggi's. There were a whole bunch of firefighters there, honoring their 343 brothers who were lost that day. For every beer they bought, they called out the name of a different firefighter - the goal being to buy a beer for each of them. We, of course, LOVED being in the presence of so many firefighters and had a chance to meet several of them. One happened to be an old friend of mine from high school named Jeff, who I hadn't seen in ages. Before we left, a bunch of them came over to give us hugs (apparently firefighters love teachers just as much as we love them!) so I asked if I could take their picture for my 'one a day.' I had the biggest smile on my face as I drove home, thinking about how much fun we had and feeling good that we could celebrate all of those brave men with our local boys.

I will never forget.