Celebration honoured. This is the loveliest of reasons to share. Join Ruth Ayres who shares a Celebration Link up on her blog each week.
Stories
I can’t think of a week where I don’t celebrate the power of stories and connections through stories.
This week I celebrate sharing my student’s comments and responses to Soccer Star written by Mina Javaherbin and illustrated by Renato Alarcão (to be released in April of 2014). Such a special title – my students’ reactions reveal how wonderful this title is to share in the classroom. Thank you to Mina for making sure I got a copy of this book to have in my classroom. It is already treasured.
I also celebrate being mentioned here with such a lovely compliment by one of my favourite authors Deborah Heiligman on the INK blog this week. Thank you to Deborah for honouring my love of nonfiction and my love of my students. I especially love connecting the two! This post reveals exactly how magical Deborah’s book The Boy who Loved Math was in my classroom.
Special Days
Don’t ask my husband because he will not be able to tell you but . . . it was in fact 17 years ago today that I walked down the aisle in a green dress carrying a bouquet of white tulips to the song The Girl from Ipanema and married this man I share my life with. Two beautiful children, lots of strong cups of morning coffee and many memories later, I am happy to celebrate this day! Here he is below (casting for hours) when we celebrated our anniversary last year at our favourite place to rent in the San Juan Islands.
Spring Cleaning (not windows and baseboards but gardens and blogs)
In the garden . . . A few years ago we renovated our house and my lovely garden survived but just barely. Life has been busy (working full time doesn’t lend itself to morning coffee and gardening mid week!) and it is only now that I am truly trying to revive the spaces I love so much. This transformation has no budget so it is basically going like this: Has it survived? Split it, move it, celebrate it. Right now, this involves a lot of cutting back, weeding and contemplating.
On the blog . . .
I have finally had time to deal with all of my little notes to myself to add to certain lists, update posts, etc. on this blog.
In the last few days, I updated these lists with new titles.
The appeal of a series: Hook some young readers!
I also had a chance to post this post: Make the Time: 15 things that matter It was something that has been rolling around in my head for a while and with all of the gardening, it came together. I would love if anyone in the Celebration community would like to add a comment on the post. I have the feeling many of you would have much to share. Many thanks!
There's a Book for That 
Your “Make the Time” post is amazing! I feel like I could learn so much visiting your classroom. Thanks for pointing us to it since I had missed it.
Thanks so much Crystal. Means a lot.
Happy Anniversary! Gardening sounds promising. May your garden grow green and blossom. Your blog blossoms already and it is a great place to visit.
Thanks for such a lovely comment Terje. Today I am grateful for rain – watering all of the plants I moved and divided yesterday!
Happy Anniversary! And thanks for sharing the lovely pictures of your life and thoughts on reading.
Thanks for the wishes!
I’ve been out, & finally back to reading, Carrie. Love that you’ve found some time for your garden. It always makes me feel so good to be out & doing something different. Soon it will be time. Snowing again today. I like that you reminded about your recent post-I really think it’s one of the important posts I’ve read lately, for many to ponder. Happy, happy anniversary-love imagining that ‘girl from Ipanema’!
Thank you Linda! I am happy that this post has struck a chord for some. I get so disheartened with all of the posts and tweets talking about testing and stress. I wanted to highlight what really matters in a learning community. Snow!? Sigh – it won’t be long before spring weather comes your way and you can get into the dirt 🙂
Happy Anniversary! I love that you celebrate both the weeding of your garden and the weeding on your blog. Powerful post.
And . . . later in this break I hope to do some weeding of my classroom library! Definitely a theme! Thanks for visiting!
Happy Anniversary! I visited your 15 Things post and left a comment – what great things you wrote about!
Thanks Holly. Off to read it. Thank you for doing that!
Happy Anniversary! If all teachers were as proud of their students as you are, then the students would believe in themselves more and do better in school. Have a great week!
Wow. Earl, thank you. What a lovely comment.
Great things to celebrate, Carrie! I have found this weekly post so helpful to not only celebrate what happened at school, but also in our family life. It is so easy for our lives to be consumed by one or the other! Your blog “cleaning up” helped me this week, I benefited from it, thanks 🙂 Have a great week!
So true Michele. It is important we have balance. Glad you found my blog “cleaning” helpful!