This year, I am trying to increase my awareness of the many good things that happen, which are frequently overlooked by me. To help me, I am joining Ruth Ayres's Celebrate This Week.
Is it only me, but do others find it hard to write a Celebrate This Week post on Friday nights, or do you schedule your posts? Since I like to think of it as a reflection of my week, I want to wait till Friday to write it up. However, Friday nights tend to be busy and Saturday mornings tend to be filled with errands. I would love to hear how everyone does their posts?
So, here it is.
Here's what I am thankful for this week...
1. Friends willing to share their expertise. On Friday, I spent nearly 6 hours with my friend Marianne Wallace. She is a biologist turned author/illustrator. I am working on creating a training for teachers on using nonfiction books as mentor texts for writing. During our time together, we pored over a few dozen nonfiction picture books discussing the styles of writing and how we would classify these books and more. Though I still have to put together the trainings, I feel like I have a much greater awareness of what I need to focus on and what gaps I have with the broader category of children's nonfiction. After I left Marianne, I picked up my friend Alethea (@frootjoos) and we grabbed some dinner and she spent at least 5 hours with me as I learned how to use a new blog platform. She is so patient when I get stuck and struggle to figure out how to do certain things. I am also thankful for how much she knows when it comes to web-development and that she is willing to share that knowledge with me.
Though both of these projects will be on-going, I am thankful for how much I was able to learn yesterday that will be helpful as I continue work on them.
2. Katherine Applegate is the most amazing author. On Wednesday, Katherine was in town for some other meetings and came to Once Upon a Time in Montrose. She met with a small group prior to the event in the store and talked about her writing, and winning the Newbery Medal. We had so much fun with her and she is simply charming.
3. Lost and Found Books and a clean trunk. If any of you have ever had an itinerant position, you will understand what I am talking about. I work with several schools and before I know it more bags and boxes of stuff end up in my car from different projects, training, and work related things. I seem to never get around with cleaning and organizing it. This week, when I misplaced a stack of books, I thought it was time to clean out the trunk in hopes of finding them. The 13-year-old and I emptied the whole trunk and reorganized it. Some stuff ended up in the trash, and other stuff (like the 30 books that were in there) were pulled out and are waiting to be shelved in the house. Good news--not only do I have a clean and organized trunk but I found the missing books.
4. The Sixteen Year Old is officially a driver. I can't take credit for teaching him how to drive. His mom gets all the kudos and awards for being the patient person while he practiced driving. However, as a good auntie/god-mom, I am rejoicing on his behalf.
Hope everyone is enjoying the first day of summer and finding ways to celebrate all the little things around them.