Celebrate This Week 3.28.15

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

Small Celebration Saturday!

It was a rough week a week ago and I just didn't have it in me to celebrate last weekend.  A week has passed, and no huge ups, but no bad downs either.  Just small celebrations.

1.  Spring Break
This was not the best Spring Break.  It was full of doctor appointments (routine) and appointments of things that need to be done not during a school day.  I appreciate that I had a week to do them.  I do my best to get things done outside of school but that's not always possible.  Having a week to get things done is helpful.  Of course we started Spring Break with a snowfall of 5+ inches.  Yuck.  The temps have not been cooperative.  But, we were off school.  I took a nap 4 days over break.  I didn't pack a lunch.  I got reading done.  Not bad.

2.  Movie time
Last weekend my daughter and I had a mother-daughter movie date.  We saw the new Cinderella.  Have you seen it?  It was beautiful.  The costumes were gorgeous, the scenery breath taking and the story fantastic.  Disney does it again.  I really enjoyed the casting too. Helena Bonham Carter as the fairy godmother?  That was a bit far-fetched, but it was fun to see her play a "good guy" because she really is a fantastic villain!  And the Frozen Fever short was so fun!  I adore Idina Menzel and Jonathan Groff so it was a pleasure listening to the new song.  This weekend my daughter is going to have a father-daughter movie date and go see the new movie Home.  It looks cute, but I think I may enjoy some downtime of my own!

3.  Shoe shopping
I have had trouble finding good spring shoes the past couple of years.  I think I finally solved the problem for this year.  A couple of weeks ago I got a couple of pairs of Sketchers, the new ones with the memory foam in them.  I love them, but feel like sometimes I need something just a bit more dressy.  I found 2 super cute pairs this week that fill that void.  And I have a pair of flip flop sandals that I love love love.  But they are getting to the point where they don't smell the best :)  Found them on Zappos, so now have a cute pair of nice smelling flip flops!

4.  Author week
I'm sure many of you have heard of the wonderful Indie bookshop, Anderson's in Naperville, IL.  It's a little over an hour away from our house.  Closer to 2 hours away when you're driving in rush hour traffic.  We don't get down there too often, which is unfortunate because they have wonderful children's literature authors that come frequently but always on a school night.  We took Spring Break as an opportunity to see two amazing authors - my daughter and I met Chris Grabenstein and.... the one and only Katherine Applegate!  We went two different days and shopped both days.  Came home with some great kidlit including a blinged up copy of The Crossover!

5.  Doing Good
This week my daughter and I went with Jen Vincent (@mentortexts) and her son to Feed My Starving Children.  I knew it was a place where you put food together that they ship out to the hungry.  I didn't realize the extent of what we were doing.  They showed us a video before we started of children in third world countries and what malnutrition is doing to them. Then we got ready and went back to the food prep room.  We actually put together food packets (vitamins, veggies, soy and rice) they they called Manna packets.  These packets are put in boxes and shipped to these different countries.  It was a great experience - the energy in the room was amazing.  This is something I would definitely like to do again.  I'm glad Jen got me involved!

Packed food w @knott_michele and her daughter at @fmsc_org today! http://t.co/ErF8pJMvLu pic.twitter.com/rX8HLpWwRa
— Jen Vincent (@mentortexts) March 27, 2015

Happy week, everyone!