Celebrating Graduation

Ruth Ayres has a link-up on weekends where people link to posts that are celebrations about their week. I love this reminder to celebrate every week.

Last week my youngest child finished high school. Yay! It was a wonderful weekend with family, food, fun and maybe a little emotion for me. Another milestone has been passed. I'm a proud mama.

We went to a lookout above the campus our youngest will attend in a few short months. It will be an interesting summer as we prepare for the transition and we're all excited to see the new twists and turns of life.

Celebrate!

Ruth Ayres has a link-up on weekends where people link to posts that are celebrations about their week. I love this reminder to celebrate every week.

I didn't post a celebration last weekend because I was out celebrating. Frequent flyer miles had accumulated over the past ten years and a visit to my grandmother was in order.

Gram moved to Florida more than a year ago and I hadn't seen her since a little before that.  We had four fun-filled days together.

Gram is a special woman. She's been on this earth for 90 years now so she can tell you a thing or two and you best listen.

One of my favorite experiences was meeting the manatees. My cousin took us to see them. We had our feet in the water and several manatees swam over to snuffle around our toes. Feeling their whiskers and breath on my feet was startling and wondrous. What made it even better was hearing Gram's giggles.

Time like this with special people is priceless.

{#sol15} Celebrations for the Week 14/31

The March Slice of Life Story Challenge 

hosted by Two Writing Teachers

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 week.

I think Slice of Life and Celebrate work well together. Here are some of my reasons to celebrate:

This first celebration is a tough one, but it really is a celebration. Yesterday, the body of Joshua Xiong was found in the Mississippi River. He had been missing since November 9, 2014 when he had gone fishing and never returned. He leaves behind a girlfriend, two young children and a family who has been waiting and waiting for him. I know the family, and though this is a painful time, it is truly a blessing that he has finally been found.

Yesterday was a difficult day, but I have some co-workers who provided smiles, hugs, and patient listening. Slicers also offered encouragement and positive words. Having a community on and offline that listen and give support is something to celebrate.

The snow has melted and I was actually hot when I got into my car after work yesterday. Spring is truly in the air and that is such a lift to my spirits. I've been able to get out and walk several times this week and my dog didn't need a full bath afterward. The puddles are mostly gone and the mud is drying out too. We may still get some cold weather or even snow yet, but we are on the road to warmer days and that is such a relief.

Lee & Low Books tweeted out about their book Sweet Potato Pie in honor of today begin Pi Day so guess what is in my oven? The recipe was easy to follow and I had everything in my cupboard except the evaporated milk. So when I ran to the library for the books I had on hold, I stopped by the store for a can of milk and started working on the pie. It's making the house smell delicious.

Slice of Life is another part of my week that I celebrate. Posting each day is not as difficult as I thought it would be - though I am not getting all of my usual posts accomplished. It is also more rewarding that I anticipated. Both from a writing standpoint, but also from the posts that I am reading and interacting with daily. There are some wonderful slicers out there that I really appreciate. Jen Vincent has been posting some very thought-provoking pieces on her blog and there are others too who have been inspiring.

I hope your week is full of lovely celebrations!

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 week.

This week held quite a few challenges and I am struggling to hold on to my One Little Word - breathe. I chose that word to remind myself to be in the moment and to let go of frustration. I'm taking those deep breaths, but unfortunately some of the frustrations are still there.

Several colleagues just got the news that they will need to change positions if they wish to remain full-time (bumping other people out) because their positions are being reduced to half-time. One of our part-time librarians was also informed that her position will no longer exist next year. 

I celebrate anyway. I celebrate positive co-workers who listened when I shared my frustrations and concerns. I celebrate my family and the love and support they provide.

On a completely different note, my daughter and I were able to celebrate the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with many other people on Monday evening. We attended our community gathering and the keynote speaker was Ruby Bridges. She expressed appreciation for the youth she meets who give her hope for the future. Hearing about her experiences was amazing. She shared both serious and amusing moments from her past.

I also celebrate books this week. We had so much fun this week reading please, baby, please by Spike and Tanya Lewis Lee. My first grade students connected that book with No David! Second grade had a great time experiencing Ninja by Arree Chung. They loved the book and the trailer too. Third grade learned a lot through We Shall Overcome: The Story of a Song. What a powerful song. I'm listening to it as I type this post.

There were many ups and downs in the week and I'm thankful for the time to reflect on both.

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 week.

Here are things that I celebrated this week:

* I was interviewed for the blog Latin@s in Kid Lit. It was fun to share.

* The other blog I am regularly part of is Rich in Color. This week it was featured as one of the "12 Blogs of 2014" on one of the School Library Journal blogs. It was fun to start the day off seeing this tweet:

Wooo-hooo! Rich in Color blog from @librarygrl2 and talented others is one of @TLT16's 12 Blogs of 2014. #richlydeserved
— Marge Loch-Wouters (@lochwouters) December 16, 2014

* A student gave me a holiday card that said, "Thank you for doing writing club. I really enjoyed having a place to write in. It was the funniest, best club ever!" We no longer have a space for writing club, but I hope the students continue to find space and time to write for fun.

* My son is home from college for break!

* The groomer had time for my dog and so he is now poofy and adorable.

* My husband made dinner Friday night when I didn't even want to think - let alone cook.

The week flew by, but fortunately, my list of things to do before the holidays is shrinking rapidly. I hope you have many things to celebrate. 

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 week.

This week was chock full of celebrations.

* My son is home from college for Thanksgiving. After his accident in October, we are more happy than ever to see him. 

* I finished my NaNoWriMo novel a few minutes ago one day ahead of schedule. Whew! It is always fun, but does make it difficult to get everything else done. 

* We've started pulling out the decorations for the Christmas season and I am excited to make the house cheery. It is especially fun knowing that our exchange student is getting to experience holidays that are new and different.

* We have started to move things in my school library into the much smaller space due to our renovation. I've condensed our nonfiction section to two large two-sided bookshelves on wheels. Several students have asked if I am going to pack our graphic novel section, but that is staying for sure. I would have a mutiny if I packed those for any length of time. I have half of the chapter book section moved and it begins to seem that our mini-library just may work. 

* We started prepping for hour of code this week. I created accounts and introduced Hour of Code with a few classes. I'm excited because since we did some things last year, it seems that this year will be even more fun and a lot of learning will be happening.

* Thanksgiving dinner was delicious. We have had some wonderful food this week and it has been in even better company.

There have been things to cry over this week too. The grand jury verdict in the Ferguson case broke a part of me. I don't understand how so many people believe that this is not about race. That paired with the shooting of Tamir Rice have me feeling a little hopeless. I have to wonder, when will the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter be unnecessary and what will I do to help make that happen?

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 week.

* It is the season for concerts. Last weekend we got to see our daughter perform in the La Crosse Youth Symphony Orchestra and in a voice recital. Coming up this week we will get to go to her high school orchestra concert too. It's a treat to hear what they have been working on and see the growth. It's fun too because this year she's playing a new instrument. The orchestra needed a bass. She plays cello so it was not too difficult to learn that over the summer. I am looking forward to seeing and hearing her with the bass. It's funny because that's what she wanted to play when she started orchestra, but they had too many at the time.

* My exchange student got to run his first ever Turkey Trot this morning. He finished faster than he thought he would. It was a success.

* I finally got to 25,000 words on my #NaNoWriMo. That is good news, but it is also bad news. It took 20 days to do that and now I only have 10 days to do the other 25,000. Eeek!

* Jacqueline Woodson's book Brown Girl Dreaming won the National Book Award. :)

* Ursula Le Guin rocked her speech. I was trying to write for #NaNoWriMo and my Twitter exploded while she was speaking. And yes, I know, having twitter open while I am writing may be contributing to my low word count. ;)

* My first grade students had a great time building after we read Christy Hale's book Dreaming Up: A Celebration of Building. We had many items to build with including Lego blocks, wooden blocks, cups, playing cards, and gumdrops & toothpicks. I enjoyed building too.

I hope your week was filled with celebrations.

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 week.

* I have a dog. He loves me. He greets me everyday with his tail wagging madly. I get kisses too if I let him close to my face. I avoid this though because I am barely tolerating dog kisses. I grew up seeing Lucy react to Snoopy.

* I met with the architect, our principal & a woman who is helping us design and furnish our new library space as we renovate the building. It's a bit overwhelming making the decisions, but it's very exciting imagining the possibilities.

* We had our first snow of the season. I know we will be tired of it eventually, but there's something magical and wondrous about seeing those big white flakes for the first time. It always gives me a joyful heart to see those beautiful flakes blanketing everything.

* My daughter's ability to drive herself has freed up a lot of time for me. I used to drive and then sit in a waiting room every week during voice lessons. I also drove 25 minutes each way to get her to orchestra practice on Saturday mornings. Her license is saving me a few hours of driving and waiting time. 

* We had our final drawing class and it was fun to see how we've progressed in six short weeks. We displayed our favorite pieces and had a fun evening together.

* This is a somewhat silly thing to get excited about, but it made me smile this week so I'm sharing it. I got a friend request on Goodreads from a favorite author. I know this doesn't make us BFFs, but it was a nice surprise.

I hope you had a week filled with things to celebrate - both large and small.

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.

I'm celebrating the fact that though my son was involved in an accident this week, he is alive and so far, it seems there are no broken bones or other more serious injuries. It could have easily been a very different result. Our midnight call was scary, but we were able to see him yesterday and I even got to hug him, though I had to be gentle.

That really is enough celebration for me though I am sure there were others throughout the week.  This one celebration is worth all other celebrations I could possibly report added together.

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.

** We had a Scholastic Book Fair this week. It is a lot of work, but the students love wandering through to see the books and gadgety things. The books that sold out were Sisters, Bugs in My Hair, Ask My Mood Ring How I Feel, Emperor Pickletine and Creepy Carrots. The most popular gadget was pens that write on things without showing up until you shine the light on the writing and erasers that were mini smart phones. I was informed that they were the perfect size for American Dolls.

** Parent teacher conferences were this week. I enjoyed my revised schedule because I had long, slow mornings before work. I wrote about that for my Slice of Life on Tuesday.

** My writing group is still meeting at school. I don't think we have more than 20 students anymore, but we still have double digits of kids and they are starting to form mini-groups. They gravitate toward writing partners or small groups of students that they feel comfortable sharing their writing with and chatting about it. On Thursday, I introduced word wars. NaNoWriMo takes advantage of the spirit of competition. You agree on a set amount of time and then all involved write furiously during that time. The winner is the person who wrote the most words. Yes, this may seem like a strange method, but it is so freeing. Personally, I have a very obnoxious inner editor that keeps me from getting words on the page. A word war is one way that allows me to push past that noisy editor. I spew words onto the page. Some are good, some are not so good, but once they are on the page I at least have something to revise. A handful of students thought it sounded fun and gave it a try. They loved it.

** Our public library is supporting NaNoWriMo with programming this year. On Nov. 1, they are having a Write-In. I am hoping that some of my students will be able to participate. My daughter and I will spend some time there. They have planned six hours of comfy chairs, snacks, giveaways and time for writing.

** I had a lovely bone scan this week because of pain in my foot. Yay! I do not have a fracture. Now a little bit of physical therapy and I should be good to get back to running and zumba.

I hope that you had much to celebrate this week. Have a great weekend!

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.

** One of the biggest celebrations this week was being able to visit the new location of the Children's Cooperative Book Center (CCBC) in Madison. The CCBC is so much more spacious and comfortable now. There is room on the shelves! Also, it is always a treat to be in the same room with so many people who love books. We talked literacy, professional development, events to come and of course - books!

A big added bonus was their lovely ARC shelf.

Total score today! Many random ARCs & a @jenniholm author study kit. pic.twitter.com/IcEpRFySqM
— Crystal Brunelle (@librarygrl2) October 11, 2014

** I was able to read a lot of recently published picture books this week and this one was a special treat for me:

Frida was such a vibrant, creative, and unique individual. Yuyi Morales shares the spirit of Frida through this beautiful book. I had tears and I read it multiple times in a row. It was quite an experience. 

** We had the first two meetings of our 4th and 5th grade writers group. I had a few more than 20 students stay in during their lunch recess to write together and talk about their writing. They were sprawled all over the library at tables on the floors, on comfy chairs and couches.

** This week we had the groundbreaking for our school. 

It is exciting for all of us to see the big equipment and see the changes happening little by little. We will have a second story and all new learning spaces by the time it is finished next year.

** While I was in Madison, I was able to visit with my son. That always makes a week special.

** The book fair materials arrived. Students are always so excited as they see the boxes slowly get opened and set up. Their eyes have a certain gleam when they see the crates.

I hope that your week was also full of celebrations!

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.

This was a challenging week for me at school and at home. I am glad we have this celebration ritual or I would likely only think of the difficulties from the week rather than the positives. And there are many positives - they just get overshadowed.

* I had a fun time this week making marranitos (pig cookies) in honor of the middle grade book Pig Park that was released in September. I reviewed it here. I found a great recipe from Muy Bueno. They were yummy and in fact, I just ate another one as part of my breakfast this morning. This was my first experience with marranitos. It's funny, but they showed up in a picture book I read this week too - The Bakery Lady/La señora de la panadería by Pat Mora.

* My daughter's tennis season wrapped up nicely. She had a tournament on Tuesday that I was able to attend. I'm happy that it ended though since I was wearing a jacket, mittens, a down vest, and was wrapped in a blanket on the bleachers. Brrr. Wisconsin can have some cold fall days.

* My dog was limping and very uncomfortable last week, but after a trip to the vet and some meds, he is doing better. He is aging so it was a bit scary, but this week has been better.

* I met my Goodreads goal for the year. I set it around the same number as last year, but have been reading more picture books this year. 

* I announced to the 4th and 5th grade students that we will have a writer's group meeting during lunch on days 3, 4, & 5 in the LMC. There were many happy students. I had no idea there were so many writers. I look forward to our writing adventures together with a bit of fear and a lot of excitement.

I hope that your week had many moments worthy of celebration! 

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.

I am sitting here rather exhausted from a long week. I am certain there are things to celebrate, but my mind is rather foggy about what has happened this week. *thinking*

Still under wrap, but you can see the tennis ball design.

* My daughter and I made a three layer cake. I decorated it with light green frosting and piped on white lines so it looked like a tennis ball on top. This was her wish for the senior tennis party. It turned out to be a very yummy cake.

* I ran three miles two times this week in preparation for my 1/2 marathon this weekend. That's also a celebration - that I am able to run a 1/2 marathon at our Oktoberfest. It's usually pretty fun.

* We got to watch our daughter march in the Applefest parade and her band got first place.

* I attended Hmong New Year again. I had six students that agreed to take pictures while they were there. I sent cameras home with them on Friday. Between my students and myself, we took over 200 pictures that we will use to create a non-fiction picture book about Hmong New Year since such a thing doesn't seem to exist as far as I can tell. You may see some of their pictures here in our announcements below. All of the people in the video are students or family members from our school.

I know there were more things to celebrate, but my brain is tired. I am going to sleep to be ready for my race. Have a great weekend!

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 my celebrations from the past week in no particular order.

** I had two fantastic runs this week. One was along the Mississippi and the arts area in La Crosse. There are poems printed into the sidewalks and I took the opportunity to blend my love for running and my love for reading. It was a beautiful crisp evening and my run was pretty close to perfect. The other run was this morning with a good friend. We ran in the wetlands seeing ducks, geese, a blue heron, and many other fun birds. The company was even better than the scenery.

View of Capitol building from the race start in Madison, WI

View of the finish line from Capitol building

** My husband completed his second Ironman. I was a seasoned spectator so we were able to plot our way through. We saw his entire swim, found a sneaky spot near the bike transition, saw him twice out on the bike and many times on the run. We even found an awesome viewing spot from high up on the capitol building and watched the first two finishers arrive.

** Oh, the food! Yum. We had a fabulous breakfast in hobbit style. We ate before the swim portion of the Ironman and since we got back to the hotel so quickly, we were lucky enough to have second breakfast too. We stopped at a Korean market after cheering out on the bike course. There we bought ice cream treats, drinks and cookies. After we cheered some more at the run, we found a greek place for a late lunch. With more hours to go, we eventually stopped for Jamba Juice (the kids), coffee (my mother-in-law) and bubble tea (for me) and contentedly rested on a bench.

** Classes at school have been going very well. I have shared some great books with students, The Pigeon Needs a Bath, The Adventures of Beekle and Naked! along with What Do You Do With an Idea? and Meet Danitra Brown. I have enjoyed getting to know the new students and reconnecting with the others. I especially liked meeting my tech crew for the first time and preparing for our first video announcements. The tech crew students are always so eager to create.

** My daughter typically plays singles in tennis, but it was a treat to get to see her play doubles this week. It's just always a treat to see her play, but her teammate was also a librarian's daughter. That made me giggle.

** A book celebration this week was reading Wild Things: Acts of Mischief in Children's Literature. I laughed out loud and had so much fun while reading it.

** My husband and I got to hike for a little while in a nearby forest. This is a really nice time of the year with pleasantly cool temperatures. Our hike would have been a tad longer, but we got a call from my daughter saying that we had an exchange student coordinator at our house and had we forgotten she was coming? Yup. We had. I was sad that she had to wait for us, but truly, I was glad I had forgotten or we wouldn't have hiked and I would have spent time cleaning when the house was actually fine.

I hope you had some great things to celebrate this week.

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 my celebrations from the past week in no particular order.

* Today while I was out on my run, I heard a band playing so I wandered in that direction. There was a charity walk going on (Stepping Out in Pink) and a local university band was playing to support the walkers. It was a fun atmosphere to be around and I also bumped into one of my students and his family.

Photo credit: Punk Toad via Flickr http://bit.ly/1lNQgqQ CC Attribution License 2.0



* Another thing that added to my run was that I was running in La Crosse while my daughter was at orchestra. I don't often run there and it is always a treat to be able to run over the big blue bridges across the Mississippi.

* We finished our first full week of school! Lessons went smoothly and there were way more smiles than tears from all concerned. That is always a good thing.

* My mother-in-law arrived safely and is here to witness my husband's second Ironman race. She went to our exchange student's soccer game, watched my daughter's tennis match and got to see her march in the band at the high school football game too.

* I get to see my son today as we are traveling to Madison for the Ironman and that's where he goes to college.

I hope your week has had many good things in it to celebrate. Have a wonderful weekend!

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.

* We are enjoying time with our short-term exchange daughter from Japan. She made dinner for us a few days ago. It was nice to sit back and relax as both daughters worked together.

* Along with the exchange comes many adventures together. This week we went kayaking. We had strong winds at first so it was a challenge, but as the evening went on the wind eased. It was beautiful out on the water.

* We had cooler weather yesterday so I didn't mind heating up the oven. I made piles of biscotti for our upcoming road trip to Montana. It travels well and is a fun snack.

* My training for RAGNAR is getting much more intense, but so far I am injury free. I'm hurrying to post this so I can get out on my run today. I have 6.5 miles to run now and 5.5 this evening. Whew!

* I didn't get to do a Celebrate post last week, but the week was full of celebrations. I mentioned some of them in my Slice of Life Post. Much of the fun was last weekend when the girls and I went to Milwaukee, Chicago and Racine. We visited a zoo, museums, beaches, and more. It's great getting to enjoy the sites together.

I am off to get one of my runs for the day out of the way. Have a great weekend!

Celebrate This Week

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.

* School ended on a good note and we are off to our summer adventures. We had beautiful weather for our field day and our last day of the school year picnic also. There were hugs, smiles and lots of positive comments floating around our building.

* My daughter and I have just about finished all of the preparations and shopping for her trip to Japan this coming Monday. Shopping is not something that I truly enjoy, but it has been nice to spend time together before she leaves for a month.

* The paperwork is wrapping up for our exchange students. We will have a Japanese student coming to stay with us when my daughter returns from Japan and she will stay for about a month. We also have a South Korean student coming at the end of July. He will stay with us for the whole school year. It's tedious to take care of the papers, but it is also a bit exciting to think about the visits.

* My husband is having a birthday and we are celebrating Father's Day too. So this means special dinners and cake and fun food. It also means time together as a family before our daughter leaves.

* I am getting focused on my running. I am signed up to run in a RAGNAR race. I am part of a team of 12 women who will run in a relay format from Winona to Minneapolis (204 miles). We are about 9 weeks out so training is starting to get serious now. I love to have something motivating me to work just a little harder.

I hope you have lots of celebrations in the coming week.

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.

** We have finished our LMC inventory! It's always nice to finish that and see where we stand going into the summer.

** One of the mothers brought us monster cookies as a thank you for teaching her children. She makes the best monster cookies of all.

** Our staff celebrated the retirement of two of our members. It's great to see them getting ready to move towards the next part of their lives with grandchildren on the way and new adventures on the horizon.

** I was struck with the stomach virus a second time this week. It was nice to have my dog curl up next to me and try to make me feel better.

** We finished up our book swap this week. It's fun to see students getting "new to them" books. Also, since I had so many extras (especially due to two huge donations earlier in the year), every single student got to choose at least one book. Those who brought books got to choose more, but I was glad that everyone could get something.

** Books! I have read many good books lately and while I was doing inventory, I grabbed quite a few to bring home for summer #bookaday. School is out next Tuesday and I am looking forward to reading many great books during vacation.

I hope you have a lot to celebrate.

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 had an orchestra concert Tuesday (that I didn't know about until Monday). It was a bit of a surprise to me, but it was really fun to hear her improvise on her cello in a jazz number. Also great to find out that she will be bringing home a bass this summer to learn because the orchestra doesn't have any members that play it now. That was something she wanted to learn way back in sixth grade so it's fun that she gets to play it for a year.

** I was horribly sick this week. Not really something to celebrate, but the silver lining was sitting on my back porch in beautiful weather during the day and watching the Blue Angels practice for today's airshow.

** My trip to Minneapolis last weekend was really nice. I have attended four anime conventions with my daughter now and this is the one that I enjoyed the most because it was not during winter so I could get outside more. I was able to go for a run to the Lake of the Isles and then visit Birchbark Books with @LibLaura5 for one of my outings. It was wonderful to chat about books - and buy some too. I love meeting Twitter friends.

** At school yesterday, we had a visit from some of the team members of the Blue Angels and then of course, in the afternoon we had extended recess to watch this....

** Finally, another great time this week was watching the live tweets from the diversity panels at BEA. I am thankful that people shared what was happening there via #WeNeedDiverseBooks.

My daughter and I are about to head out to the official airshow. After watching the practices all week long it will be fun to see it from the show grounds. Have a great week!

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.