Celebrate This Week 3.07.15

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

Oh yikes, my last Celebrate post was exactly a month ago.  Sounds about right, life got so busy right about then.  I have found that out about life - it seems like a period of time comes when things get really really busy and something has to go.  I became a real "reading in the edges" reader this past month.  I read when I could, even if that meant it took me a couple of weeks to finish a book!  Writing took more of a backseat.  Lots of thoughts in my head, nothing on paper or typed out.  Luckily, things are calming down a bit.  Maybe not during the week, but my weekends are a bit slower.  Especially this one.  I've been looking forward to today for awhile.  I had purposely not planned anything.  Well, until tonight.  My birthday dinner.  Yup, today is my birthday and I wanted to do nothing.  I wanted time to read and time to write.  I'm doing exactly that and it feels good.  I've curled up this morning with a great book - Thanhha Lai's newest Listen, Slowly - and now I'm writing my first Celebrate post in a month.  Not a bad way to celebrate.

Here's the good things that have popped out this month:

1.  I completed Disney's Glass Slipper Challenge.  
Yup, 19.3 miles later (10k on Saturday and 1/2 Marathon on Sunday), I have 3 amazing medals, great pictures and memories, a fading tan, new Minnie Mouse gym shoes and some great race swag.  I love running in Disney.  It's not about your time, it's about the fun.  Complete the miles, but have fun while doing it.  I still don't know what my ending time was and I'm not going to worry about it.  Standing in line to get pictures with the Disney Villains was worth it!  I went away with 2 great friends and it was a wonderful long weekend.  I'm ready for warm sun and green grass to show up in my neck of the woods any day now!

1 medal for the 10k

1 medal for the 1/2 marathon

and 1 medal for being crazy enough to do both!

2.  Swimming accomplishments
I've written about my daughter's swimming feats many times and I would be a bad mom if I didn't take the time and write about her latest.  While I was running 19.3 miles, she was busy taking 43 seconds off 5 different swimming events in her regional competition.  43 seconds may not seem a lot, but usually at this point in the swim season, kids are taking maybe half a second to a couple of seconds off races.  Multiply that by 5 and you certainly do not get 43!  She had an amazing meet and I was sorry to have missed it.  I spent a few tense minutes pacing the hotel room while she swam her 500 free.  One thing that was funny, yet reminded me that she was growing up, was that I was receiving text messages from her while I was running.  Because of the hour time difference and her having to get up early to go to the meet, she was up texting with me during my race.  It gave me some motivation to keep going.
Last weekend, my daughter competed in the Wisconsin State Swimming Championship.  Most of you know my daughter has a physical disability, but she swims with able bodied swimmers.  She also competes in Paralympic Swimming.  Her coach wants her to understand what it's like to swim in championship level swimming meets to get her used to that level of competition.  He believes in her ability and thinks she'll be able to get far with her Para swimming.  He petitioned the state swimming board to allow disabled swimmers to swim in the meet as well.  It worked, but she was the ONLY disabled swimmer there.  I felt lucky that she is not self-conscious at all and it didn't bother her - truth be told, I don't think she realized she was the only one.  She swam with all the other state swimmers and had a blast being with her team.  She hit her goal of going under 40 sec in the 50 free which was so exciting to see.

This is having fun at a meet!

3.  Wait list for books
Readers are used to waiting.  Waiting for books to come in to the library.  Waiting for favorites to be published.  Waiting for books to be delivered.  But until recently, the kids I worked with never pined for books.  They never waited.  Never had a desire to wait.  But now we have lists of kids waiting for books.  Our reading kids have influenced their classmates to wait for books.  The recent push is for the Amulet books.  We have an amazing reading assistant with a steel trap mind who somehow knows where both of our copies of all 6 books are and which kids want them next.  She gets mobbed when she walks into her 2 classrooms that she supervises after lunch because kids all want to know if their time waiting for a book is done.  That's a nice change.

I know February has had more celebrations to talk about but it's my birthday and I want to get back to my reading day.  Hope you found celebrations this week (or month!) too! :)