Celebrate This Week 1.11.14

It's always good to end the week on a positive note.  Sometimes we concentrate on the negatives.  We have a choice.  Choose positive.  Choose to celebrate.  I will be joining Ruth Ayres and her weekly link-up, Celebrate This Week.  Check out all the other celebrations HERE

1.  Snow Days.  I at first did not really want the snow days.  We were scheduled to get out of school on May 31.  I don't think, other than college, have I ever gotten out of school before June.  And it seems like usually we get out later and later in June, so May just sounded amazing.  But the temps were crazy cold.  I don't remember it ever being this cold.  Well, actually, I believe Tom Skilling (love Tom) even said we broke the record low!  Bottom line, it was too cold to get the kids outside.  Too many dangers outside.  So, I enjoyed my days.  I read even more.  I got more things done in the house.  And I got lunches and snacks ready for the week.  I hate packing my lunch.  Hate it.  So to have the next 3 days ready to go, I was feeling pretty good.

2.  On Thursday I walked into one of the 4th grade classrooms that I work in, all ready to teach an hour lesson.  Before we left for winter break, several of the students were reading Powerless by Matthew Cody and I had told them I was planning on reading the sequel over break.  After doing a quick book talk for the sequel Super, I told them about a super cool tweet I had received from the author letting me know there would be a third installment in this awesome series.  We celebrated and then I was ready to move on to our lesson, but before I could start I had a rush of students coming up to tell me about what they had read over break and wanting to talk about the books!  I felt strongly about listening to each of them because this enthusiasm for reading, is not always displayed by them - I didn't dare stop the excitement!  Once the kids were working, their classroom teacher said she had never seen them so excited about reading.  I was so happy to hear that - love that kids are excited and so happy to have had a part in it!

3.  We are back to swim meets this weekend.  We had a nice month and a half off, but now we're back to every other weekend.  I love watching my daughter swim.  She doesn't really care about her time.  She wants to know if she beat her previous times, but she really doesn't care either way.  What's important to her is she is with friends.  She's friends with many kids on the team, both boys and girls.  They cheer each other on.  They talk on the pool deck.  I'm glad she is part of a team.  This weekend she swims in her first relays.  I think she will enjoy them.  She also has her first endurance challenge, as an 8 year old, she's swimming a 200 free - that's 8 lengths.  She's nervous, but I think she'll rise to the challenge.  Yea for her!

4.  I have a sickness.  I buy way too many books.  Thank goodness I use the library.  And I use it well.  I currently have 50 books checked out.  My school library also got 2 new boxes of books in today.  I've taken 1/2 home.  In between swim meets and everything else I need to do, I'm going to read.  Some of them anyway.  My daughter has already attacked the pile. Celebrate that!

5.  I have to celebrate starting a blog and figuring out Twitter.  I've only been doing both for maybe 2 weeks and I can't believe the professional development help I've received.  If I've communicated with you via Twitter, thank you!  It's an amazing resource and I'm thrilled to have found it!

Off to sit at swim meets for the rest of the weekend!  Go Patriots :)