Celebrate This Week! 7.12.14

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

It's been an interesting week, but lots to celebrate!

Celebration#1:  nErDcampMI
I've already blogged about my reflections of this wonderful camp HERE.
I love the concept of an ed camp, but an ed camp run by Nerdy Book Club people?  Done!
A fantastic part about this camp were all the authors that came:

I met Donalyn!

Love these Chicagoland authors - Michele Weber Hurowitz and Liesl Shurtliff

My daughter getting her Arnie book signed by Laurie Keller

Jess Keating

This was my daughter's 2nd time (my 3rd!) time meeting Liesl Shurtliff.

Nancy Cavanaugh

The authors that were there were so wonderful with the kids and with us!  Genuine people who think about kids!

Celebration #2:

It was my daughter's 9th bday yesterday. She had a couple of options, but what she wanted most of all was to take a trip to Anderson's Bookshop and meet Chris Colfer.  Chris wrote The Land of Stories series and the third one just came out this past Tuesday.  Anderson's is a good hour plus change away from us, but it's always an experience being there.  I tried to make good use of our trip down there by meeting up with my Grandmother who lives in the next town over.  Chicago traffic went against us.  So that hour plus change trip went up to over 2 1/2 hours.  No nice long dinner.  Quick bite to eat and off to the bookshop.  It was a mob scene!  So many people!  I had been told on the phone when I got our tickets that he would talk before he signed.  Either that person didn't get the memo, or it was changed.  No talking and no taking pictures with him and no personalization of the books.  He would sign copies of all 3 books as long as you had purchased the third book.  I got the quick snap of him below before we were allowed up to talk to him.  Once we got up there, he was actually very kind.  My daughter told him it was her birthday so she got an extra star drawn in her book :) I asked him about the research he did for the books and he told me the third book was the one he had to research the most - the Brothers Grimm and other middle European fairy tales.  I would have loved to talk to him more about his writing and reading life.  I told him I was an educator and I enjoyed passing off his books to readers.  He asked me what I taught and said thank you for sharing his books.  I did not expect such a genuine conversation.  He was a cool author to meet!

Celebration #3:

We had a lot of injuries this week.  You might have read about my daughter's fall and stitches.  We went to the dr today to get them removed but it was a no go.  He said he didn't want the wound to reopen and I 100% agree, so they are on until Monday.  Bummer.  But I remind myself, this could have been so much worse.  Broken jaw... broken arm and cast for the rest of summer... broken leg would have been a trip to FL to see her ortho dr.

Then on Wednesday I took my first bike spill.  I've been anticipating this happening.  Look forward to Tuesday's SoL.... I think this is a blog post waiting to happen!  So I'm celebrating our injuries not being as bad as what they could have been!

Celebration #4:

I think the rest of the summer is going to be a little bit quieter now.  We'll still be busy with the day to day things, but no more road trips.  I'm looking forward to getting some things done at home!

I sincerely hope everyone has a good week!  I like the feeling when there are no downs, and no really high highs, just when things go well....