Celebrate!

Ruth Ayres has a link-up on Saturdays where people link to posts that are celebrations about their week. I love this reminder to celebrate every day. Here are some of my celebrations from the week in no particular order.

* My daughter and I drove up to the cities so I could attend the Arbuthnot lecture. It was a great day. We arrived at The Source in time to participate in Free Comic Book Day. Then we headed to the Central Library in Minneapolis. There we visited the book store and purchased some great used books. My daughter visited the teen section & read while I visited the children's section and did the same.

Central Library

Birchbark Books

Next we went to Birchbark Books. What an amazing store. I loved the calm atmosphere and the beautiful birch inside the store. It was also fantastic to have access to so many books written by or about Native people. We made our purchases in honor of the #WeNeedDiverseBooks campaign and then headed next door to The Kenwood after getting a recommendation at Birchbark. The food was wonderful and we had just enough time to get to the lecture. Andrea Davis Pinkney shared her personal story of growth as a writer from childhood to today. She also shared the history of African American children's literature. The lecture seemed to fit in perfectly with the theme of the week in social media #WeNeedDiverseBooks. As an added bonus to the already amazing lecture, we got to meet Kate DiCamillo. She was super kind and welcoming.

In addition, I met the authors Swati Avashti and Coe Booth in line. I also had a nice discussion with Stephanie Lurie from Disney Hyperion. It was interesting to find out more about publishing.

* Another highlight was my Zumba class. I still have the same instructors, but we have changed locations. I was worried since the building is not a dance studio and we no longer have mirrors, but wow! We have huge windows looking out into a park. Seeing the grass, trees, and sky is a bonus well worth the loss of mirrors.

* New books! A large order came in and it is always a treat to go through them while getting them ready. 

* My son will be home from college in less than a week! Making plans for getting him home has been making me smile a lot. :)

I hope your week was full of celebrations and if not, I hope next week will be an improvement.