Celebrate This Week! 3.08.14

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

Oops.  It's been a little while since I've posted to this meme.  I've had a few very very busy weeks, and I had to make a decision.  Sometimes blogging doesn't win.  But I'll recap the past few weeks and celebrate the good busy-ness!

Celebration #1:  The week of Feb. 10:  The week flew by since we were so busy with parent/teacher conferences.  But it ended with a great celebration on Sat., Feb. 15.  I went to my first Anderson's Children's Literature Breakfast.  Anderson's is a fabulous indie bookseller.  Unfortunately, it's about an hour and 15 min. drive from my house.  I often see Anderson's at the various reading functions I've attended - Illinois Reading Conference and the International Reading Conference when it was in Chicago.  I visit their web page because they always are so on top of what's current in children's literature.  So I was excited to go to my first Children's Lit Breakfast.  It did not disappoint!  I was a little nervous because I was going by myself - I couldn't convince anyone else to make the morning trip with me (silly friends!).  But I quickly met up with some Twitter peeps!  I had a great morning meeting @dylanteut, @MrSchuReads, @daydreamreader and @100scopenotes.  I missed @librarygrl2 but it was fun seeing her Tweets and perspective of the day.  I loved meeting the authors (Laurie Keller, Aaron Reynolds, Jon J Muth, Maggie Stiefvater, Lin Oliver and... The Fonze himself, Henry Winkler.  It was awesome listening to them talk and hearing how they put their personalities into their writing.  I got autographs and pictures with many of them.  We met several Illinois authors that rotated through our tables.  I picked up several pre-publication books and lots of others that were signed by the authors throughout the morning.  I loved being able to share some of my stories with the authors - I gushed to Aaron Reynolds how much I love his stories - have you read Creepy Carrots or Carnivores???  Brilliant!  I shared with Laurie Keller how I brought a well loved library copy of her picture book, Arnie the Doughnut, to my daughter's classroom when I was Mystery Reader to find out that 8 pages were missing!  And guess what?  She's sending us a new copy!  And to sit with people who were all there for the same reason I was - because they love children's literature... well, that was an honor.  To have conversations with all new faces, some were classroom teachers, some tutors, some librarian/media specialists.  It was quite an exciting morning.  One that I hope to repeat annually.  Thanks Anderson's for hosting a fantastic morning.  And thanks to everyone I talked to that day who shared their love of reading with me.

Celebration #2:  Weeks of Feb. 17 and 24:  The week of Feb. 17 was spent teaching, running my daughter around and packing!  Because we left that weekend for our first ever cruise on Disney's Fantasy!  It was AMAZING!!!  We are a huge Disney family but had never cruised.  I didn't know what to expect.  We love Disney so much, would this be a let down?  Ummm, no!!  The plan to do this started back in the fall/winter of 2012.  My daughter has CFD and fibular hemimelia.  Basically, this means her right leg is shorter than her left.  Her femur and tibia are shorter, she's missing her fibula and has issues with all 3 joints in that leg.  But we have an amazing doctor in West Palm Beach, FL (hence the Disney trips) and he's given her a great future.  Every 4 years she has to have her leg lengthened.  She's had 2 lengthenings and will need 2 more.  But, she'll walk on her own 2 feet with even legs one day.  Amazing.  During her last lengthening, she decided she wanted to celebrate being done with that lengthening on a Disney cruise.  Fast forward from this:

To this:

My favorite place to read, deck 4:

It was a well earned celebration!  We had a fantastic time and loved everything about the Disney cruise.  I will say this, Disney has done an excellent job of branding themselves - they are known for their customer service and impeccable entertainment.  We certainly need to think about how we can take that logic to our schools, our classrooms, and show our students how to brand themselves as readers.

Celebration #3:  This week:  Well, first I had to recover from vacation let-down.  I'm still not over it!  Helping me "recover" is my birthday.  My parents got me a gift card.  Lots of books were purchased... And then earlier this week I won a copy of Dan Santat's new book The Adventures of Beekle.  I was beyond excited to get that news.  Being a huge Dan Santat fan, this simply made my day!  I love that my daughter and I are fighting over who is going to read it first when it arrives.  And have you seen the trailer for this book?  If not, check it out HERE.

Hopefully I'm back to a regular schedule and regular postings.  Hope everyone else found something to celebrate this week!