Celebrating The People In My Life

              I celebrate each Saturday with Ruth Ayres at Discover Play Build - It's a close community that celebrates together. Come join us!          Tweet at #CelebrateLu

        I didn't post last week because my brother, sister-in-law and niece were in town to help celebrate my birthday, but so many other wonderful things have happened along with celebrating that day. Living a long way from them is hard. We all wish we lived so much closer. This is the family Sarah, her two daughters, and my grandson Carter (my son's son) travel to visit each summer. We are close, but we want the kids to know them and be close, too!

This week I'm celebrating

Family - I had the pleasure of taking and watching the grand-girls at their dance lessons-so cute and serious. When my visitors arrived, we visited all one morning, just talking and laughing, catching up. Then I took them to one of our arts district areas to visit a few antique stores. They own one, so it was fun to look at the stores through owner's eyes along with loving the fun to searching for a "find". (That's the middle bottom picture.) We had the pleasure of watching a new mural be finished among the many others in the area. Amazing work, all from a very tall ladder! 

          On the way to a small mountain town on my birthday, we grabbed a box of VooDoo donuts (left middle), because they are delicious and my niece had only heard of them on the Food Network. She was happy! In the mountain town, we had lunch at my favorite restaurant there, The Happy Cooker, and strolled in and out of shops, admiring art and rocks and souvenirs. (upper right photo) Ingrid was in school, but Imogene came along, and got to choose a couple of what she calls "decoration rocks" at the fabulous rock shop. As you see in the bottom left picture, she had lots of fun walking along walls.  She carried the rocks in her pocket with a big smile on her face! 

Friends - The statue of the reading girl in the top middle means two things: First, I met a friend for lunch, a former colleague that I haven't seen enough, and it was so good to see her and enjoy being with her again. And second, a former student at my school and her husband have this week published a book about their journey together, opening a school for young girls in the Kibera slum, outside Nairobi, Kenya. The book is Find Me Unafraid: A Story of Love, Loss and Hope in an African Slum, by Kennedy Odede and Jessica Posner. Here is the link and you can find my review and others on Goodreads.I read it quickly, although I know much of the story. Nevertheless, it is a stunning story. Please check it out.

The picture upper left is of a card sent to me by Michelle Hazeltine, who shared on FB that she loved sending cards to people. I commented to say how thoughtful she was, and she sent me a card too! 

Thursday morning, I met a former colleague whom I miss a lot very early before school, hence that sunrise picture, the final one. Like the colleague I mentioned earlier, those connections are missed, so I am happy that we can still get together. And the bonus was seeing that sunrise. I don't see them anymore unless I'm out in the car because my house view is blocked by apartments to the east.

It's been a good two weeks, filled with good times, especially those relationships so good for the soul.