Celebrating After All

              I'm celebrating each Saturday or Sunday with Ruth Ayres at Discover Play Build. Come join in to share your own special celebrations.

           Sometimes my life is so busy, then Saturday arrives and I think I have nothing to celebrate, or I think I have everything to celebrate. A good week fills with nice things, and along comes a chink in it, and I hope for goodness in the weeks ahead. A family member is ill, will begin treatment soon, and while I celebrate the wonderful parts of my life that continue, I am sad for this part, and hopeful for good news in the weeks ahead.

         The teacher I work with gave a wonderful lesson this week, followed by a good conversation.

          Imogene comes to stay after school on Wednesdays. Imi is an active four year old, running, climbing, tumbling. She loves books, too, but the first thing we did this time was rush to a new playground before the sun went down. She ran and climbed and laughed, and it was a joy to watch. 

I also had the joy of seeing a beautiful sunset. If you know me on Facebook, you know I'm crazy about sky pics. We walked along the stream looking for ducks, no ducks, but imagined coming back in the summer so we could wade in and look for other animals that might live there.

And I worked again at the bookstore, and had some lovely conversations about books with customers.

And Ingrid came on Friday. It's been very warm lately, so we went for ice cream. Last Friday we spent ordering some used beginning readers. I want to celebrate the motivation that a book can have. By the end of the day no books had arrived yet, and Ingrid was disappointed. She is an early reader so we read a few I already have at home, then I read some new picture books to her. We ate and left for home. My mail comes late, so we stopped to get it, and there were two books in the mail! One is one she really, really wanted, a story about a leopard and the sky god (her unit is big cats this year). Somehow she had heard it before and was thrilled to find it. It's a little harder book than she's been reading. On our drive home, with a little flashlight I keep in the car, she was determined, began reading, and spelled the words she didn't recognize. She kept going all the way home, continued saying, "Isn't this a great story, Grandma?" I celebrate choice for all kids in reading. If they want it enough, they'll figure it out! 

So here I am on Saturday, looking at my little celebrations and feeling like it was a week worth smiling about.