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.

My final day of work was Monday. I finished packing in the morning and then there was a lunch celebration for several of our teachers. One was retiring, one got married during the school year and one is getting married later this month. It was nice to end the year with such a happy time together.

This was also the week that we said goodbye to our Korean student. He had been living with us since last July so it was hard to send him home. It's an adjustment, but we know he was looking forward to seeing his friends and family. We hope that we made his year here a positive experience.

On Thursday, I had lunch with friends and then went by my school. We were told to go check and make sure that nothing was accidentally placed in with the sale items. I was glad that I stopped by otherwise some library speakers and a large tote of extension cords would likely have been sold in the auction yesterday. I also found this fantastic old typewriter on a shelf. Students are going to love using it.

Later on, I also found a book to go with it when we were in Minneapolis for the weekend. It's called The Lonely Typewriter. 

We were in the cities because a friend was getting married. We drove up a little early to have lunch and stop at Wild Rumpus. They had a fantastic window display. 

I think it said "Books can be our mirrors + windows. See yourself see each other." There were many inclusive books on display in the window with a few hanging mirrors. There were tons of inclusive books displayed throughout the store too. Yay Wild Rumpus! As usual, there were also entertaining animals wandering around the store. The fluffy chickens would fit right in with Sophie and her unusual chickens.

We were also able to visit Lake Harriet for a while before the wedding. It was a perfect day to sit and watch the water.

Finally, we got to share in the beautiful ceremony that united two lovely people in marriage. 

There was so much to love about their wedding. They even found a way to include their three rescue dogs. Lola, Doc, and Dudley were adorable walking down the aisle. 

There was so much to celebrate this week. Having time to spend with family and friends is a spectacular gift.

Slice of Life - Minneapolis

The Slice of Life Challenge was created by the people over at the blog Two Writing Teachers. The challenge is to write about some part of your day and share it each Tuesday then give feedback to at least three other bloggers.

My exchange student and I packed a lot of stuff into our Sunday. We got up and left the house around 8:00. We made it to St. Paul around 11:00. Our first stop was the Hmong Village Market. I bought an outfit, a bracelet, and a ball (the ones used for ball toss at New Year's). There is always so much to see there. I was disappointed that the bookstore Hmong ABC wasn't open yet. I always stop in there, but I knew we would visit at least one more bookstore that day, so we headed out to our next destination: The Mall of America.

We had a fun time exploring the mall. I had no idea that one time around the mall was a little over half of a mile, but that is what we learned on the Internet. I soon got a text from a loved one asking if I knew that the mall was under a high security alert. Ugh. We stayed anyway. The threat of terrorism hung over my head a bit, but I figured it was probably more likely that we would have a traffic accident on the way home. 

We also went to a waterfall to have a bit of a winter adventure. We had to hop across to get underneath the icicles, but it was cool to hear the water behind the ice. It was gurgling back behind me. There was steam and warm air in that cave. That actually felt wonderful since the high that day was -2 and the wind was blowing.

Our next stop was the Cowles Conservatory in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. Due to the frigid temps, we skedaddled into the conservatory and looked at the Spoonbridge and Cherry from the toasty warm entry way. The frost designs on the windows were swirly and amazing. Walking among the plants with the snow and ice outside made me feel like we were getting away with something.

Our final stop was Birchbark Books. The owner, Louise Erdrich, was there to do a reading. They were having an open house so there were refreshments. I bought a nice pile of books and even read a few. After she read a bit, we were running out of steam and needed to head home.

I'm glad we got to experience so many wonderful things together. I was also quite happy to get home  and sink into a chair.