Celebrate This Week!

                                      Join us each weekend for Celebrate This Week with Ruth Ayres.  

 When we pause to celebrate, we find the joy.

  A week filled with moments to celebrate and remember!

1.  Some of my book club members returned their permission slips,

so I can  post this picture of seven members.  

 We had 15 members in attendance.  I'm hoping for more returned
permission slips next week so I can take pics of our
book club discussions for these three Newbery possibilities:

The War that Saved my Life

Listen, Slowly

The Seventh Most Important Thing

2.  Mallory (Imi's mom) invited me to join them at Island Books for story time 

with Nancy Stewart, composer and performer of children's music and

creator of the Sing With Our Kids Project.  Nancy is an island resident and our community is so lucky to be part of her project.  Check out this

You Tube video to learn more about Nancy's focus on community singing

and visit her Sing With Our Kids web site for many links and free resources.  

Here's Imi enthusiastically showing Nancy

her small book of "The Wheels on the Bus."

3.  This week's tree pics were taken enroute to the town center on a

typical gray Northwest day complete with a bit of drizzle.  

More wind and rain is predicted for tonight and tomorrow.

I'll  be watching "leaf falls" in the ravine this weekend.  

4.  This text from my niece (4th grade teacher) after I inquired
about her Friday before Halloween in the classroom:
"PS:  Best part of the day was turning out the lights and reading
'The Chicken Coop Monster' with a flashlight to them!  They loved it!"
So glad she's carrying on my tradition (it's a story from  
The Dark Thirty by Patricia C. McKissack). 

5.  I'm writing my post on Friday night!

A Lost Item Story!

Today I join my fellow bloggers in "serving up a slice" 

to the Tuesday Slice of Life (SOL) community.
Thanks to Stacey, Tara, Betsy, Dana, Beth, Anna, Kathleen, and Deb

                    for hosting this meeting place each Tuesday and nurturing our writing lives.

A late night slice at the end of a busy day . . .

How much time do I spend looking for things?

Today it was the box holding the stuff I stashed from my desk. 

Before I went to TN, it was beside my desk, 

At some point, I moved it to the back bench.

But it's no longer there!

Did I put it in the garage?  No, not there!

Maybe in the laundry room?  No, not there!

How about the guest bedroom?  Nope, not there either! 

Maybe in Blake's old bedroom?  No, not there. 

I give up!

Maybe, I emptied it before my trip . . . 

Not likely!

I put it out of my mind and attend to other tasks.

I head to the closet to put away the toys from the church bag.

When I open the door, lo and behold, there's the box I've been seeking.  

I only wish all my lost items would turn up so easily.  

Sometime soon, another lost item story, but not tonight.  

The call of a warm bed and a soft pillow is too strong!

Celebrate This Week!

                                      Join us each weekend for Celebrate This Week with Ruth Ayres.  

 When we pause to celebrate, we find the joy.

  A week filled with moments to celebrate and remember!

Taking my cue from Ruth's son, Sam:  "I think I'll praise God."  

1.  I'll praise Him for our gorgeous world and these pics snapped Sunday morning in the church parking lot!

2.  I'll praise Him for neighbors who put a smile on my face 

with their creative lawn displays.  

3.  I'll praise Him for birthday week and the gift of two children who fill our lives with joy.  This pic was taken twenty-nine years ago.  Sara arrived the day before Blake's second birthday.  I love this pic of Mom and me introducing Sara to Blake.

4.  I'll praise Him for walks with my husband and my daughter

to savor the beauty that surrounds us.

  

5.  I'll praise him for our friend, Ruth, who provides this place for

our community to come together and celebrate weekly!

Airport Generosity!

Today I join my fellow bloggers in "serving up a slice" 

to the Tuesday Slice of Life (SOL) community.
Thanks to Stacey, Tara, Betsy, Dana, Beth, Anna, Kathleen, and Deb

                    for hosting this meeting place each Tuesday and nurturing our writing lives.

If you're like me, you can get rather grumpy when it's time to head to the airport. Small annoyances become large in the contained space that we find ourselves in as we wait for our flights.  On Wednesday, I arrived at the Nashville airport two hours before flight time.  I spent a significant amount of time logging steps on my Fitbit (always a good idea to walk before a flight that is 4+ hours long, right? ).   

As flight time draws closer, I stop by the Hudson Newsstand to purchase my favorite snack, toasted peanut butter crackers.  They have packages of cheese and crackers and peanut butter with the orange crackers, but no toasted peanut butter crackers.  I explain my preference to the employee.  She agrees with me, the toasted ones are her favorite too.  I leave empty handed and stand in line for my flight which is adjacent to the newsstand.  

A short time later, someone taps me on the shoulder to tell me to return to the newsstand.  I'm puzzled, pretty sure that I didn't leave anything behind.  Imagine my surprise when I return, and the employee hands me a package of toasted peanut butter crackers (from her own lunchbox), with the words, "I didn't want you to be hungry!"

It's nice to be blessed by the generosity of others.  Now I'm on the lookout for a chance to pass on her thoughtfulness to someone else.  And when I tore off yesterday's calendar page this morning, this is the quote that greeted me for today!

Celebrate This Week!

                               Join us each weekend for Celebrate This Week with Ruth Ayres.  

 When we pause to celebrate, we find the joy.

  A week filled with moments to celebrate and remember!

I finished a wonderful week in TN on Wednesday.  My time there with family is a precious memory that continues to spool through my days.  

1.  Lunch at Bell Buckle Cafe with Blake and Stefi!


My son has raved about the oatmeal cake with caramel sauce ever 
since he lived in TN.  My only regret is that we shared this piece of cake three ways.  I'm on a quest to find the recipe since I don't make it to TN very often, 
and I'm already hankering for my next piece.  

2.  A Visit to the Farm!

My great-niece, Sarah, made sure that I got to meet all the chickens.
I sent her the pictures and she wrote the descriptions:

So this one I'm feeding is Miracle, she used to be called Brainless (by my mom) because our rooster Bou Bou pecked her head. Then she recovered and got hit by a car and now she is called Miracle. She has almost fully recovered from that and is doing great!

The one the farthest in the back is Betsy, with the black head, and she lays the blue eggs. The next one is Rachel with the red head, she lays brown eggs.  And Betsy and Rachel are both Americana's. The second closest is Ava May. Then the closest is Ruby Gilis.

Betsy's blue eggs!

3.  Hike at Old Stone Fort!

Tree branch frames my great nieces and great nephew-

 Sarah, Erin, and Sam!

4.  Sister Outing!
My sister, Velma, and I went shopping and out to lunch.  When you live far away from family, an excursion with your sis is the best treat ever!

Few trees in Tennessee had donned their fall colors, but I did find 

this show of color in a mall parking lot.

   5.  Back home in the Pacific NW!

 Sara's blue hydrangeas transform to deep purple for fall.

Slice of Life: Making Roll in Tennessee!

Today I join my fellow bloggers in "serving up a slice" 

to the Tuesday Slice of Life (SOL) community.
Thanks to Stacey, Tara, Betsy, Dana, Beth, Anna, Kathleen, and Deb

                    for hosting this meeting place each Tuesday and nurturing our writing lives.

Sometime around dusk, I hear the coyotes howling.  Sometime in the night, I hear the lonesome wail of a train.  And sometime around daybreak, I awake to a lone rooster greeting the day.  Time to rise and shine!  

Sarah, my great niece, pops in the door with the first egg of the day.  She's fairly dancing with excitement for our morning project.  But first we gather around her grandmother Nancy's table for a country breakfast - two farm fresh eggs served with homemade wheat bread toast and crabapple jelly.  

And then it's time to rock and roll because today is "roll-making" time.  Sarah is learning how to make chocolate roll, a pastry that family lore traces to my great-grandmother, Elizabeth Caroline Duff, Sarah's great-great-great grandmother.  My nephew, Shaun, has requested that I share the recipe and a hands-on lesson with Sarah while I'm visiting Tennessee.  

The biggest decision of the morning is whether to bake a cinnamon or chocolate roll.  No problem there, we'll just make both.  Each of us stirs up a batch of pie dough.  I model the process with the chocolate roll, and Sarah makes the cinnamon roll.  As she expertly rolls out the rectangular base for the pastry, I verify that she has the baking gene!  

As Sarah pulls her finished cinnamon roll out of the oven, I think of the angel cooks hovering in the kitchen, (Elizabeth Caroline, Ella, and Lillian),  giving their nods of approval.   I can almost hear the flutter of wings as they exit the room, knowing that another family branch will continue to sit down together to savor chocolate and cinnamon roll.

Celebrate This Week!

                              Join us each weekend for Celebrate This Week with Ruth Ayres.  

 When we pause to celebrate, we find the joy.

  A week filled with moments to celebrate and remember!

It's one of those wonderful weekends.  Almost too busy living life
to celebrate, but here are a few quick celebrations: 

1.  Celebrating the founders of lost items!

Saving the details for a slice of life, but I celebrate that

two lost items were found this week by other members of my family.

2.  A trip to Tennessee!

I arrived Thursday evening for a visit with my sister and her family.  My son and wife arrived Friday evening.  We spent yesterday visiting some of the sights and people from areas he served on his LDS mission (almost ten years ago).  

We enjoyed dinner and visiting with my nieces, nephews, great nieces and great nephews, son and daughter-in-law, and sister and her husband.  

Today I head out to a nephew's home to visit his family, teach a great niece how to bake a treasured family recipe, and take a "gentle" hike with them. 

3.  More fall color!
I'm worried that wind and rain will defrock the trees
of their wonderful dresses before I return home.

Leaves collected on Monday to decorate for a church activity! 

Fall color on a rainy morning, shot from the Rite Aid parking lot!

Slice of Life: Books, Brownies, and Beyond!

Today I join my fellow bloggers in "serving up a slice" 

to the Tuesday Slice of Life (SOL) community.

Thanks to Stacey, Tara, Betsy, Dana, Beth, Anna, Kathleen, and Deb

                    for hosting this meeting place each Tuesday and nurturing our writing lives.

At precisely 2:50 the library begins to fill with chattering voices.  Students shed backpacks and slide into chairs.  I ask them to rearrange the library tables.  Today we try out a U shape.  Our increased numbers have required me to rethink our meeting strategy.

We begin today with small group discussions:  "How is reading a book for book club different from reading a book on your own?"  We share our answers to the question.  Responses include:  "You read more carefully, you pay attention, you may use sticky notes, you may want to jot down questions, you will explore genres you might not explore on your own, you can talk to others reading the same book and they may be able to answer your questions, you think more deeply about the book, you may choose to reread a book you've read previously in order to understand it better, you'll judge the book or give it a rating."  

We reconvene around the U shape.  Ms. Bowman, KCLS teen librarian joins us for the first time this year.  She knows some of the participants.  I practice going around the group and introducing students to her.  I'm name challenged (a terrible trait for a teacher).   I'm excited that today we have fourteen participants:  seven boys and seven girls with a mixture of sixth and seventh grade students.  Ms. Bowman and I take turns introducing possible titles for our first round of book club.  We quickly booktalk ten titles from the collection.  One student has read every one of the books we pulled!

We end up with three groups:  four students choose Heart of a Samurai, five students choose  One for the Murphys, and four students choose Home of the Brave.  Each group is a mixture of boys and girls.  We search for the book sets behind the beautiful tapestries hiding the lit circle collections.  We check out the books leaving a handwritten list for the librarian to enter in the computer tomorrow.

Each student grabs a cookie bar or two on the way back to the table.  Not much time, but we set out new titles from my bin.  I preview A Nearer Moon and Crenshaw (it's going to Tennessee with me this week).  Ms. Bowman previews the graphic novels Drowned City (she loves Hurricane Katrina books) and The Great American Dust Bowl.  We quickly return tables to their regular spots, grab bus passes and leave with wonderful books in hand for our first book club groups.  I love Tuesday afternoons! 

Celebrate This Week!

                              Join us each weekend for Celebrate This Week with Ruth Ayres.  

 When we pause to celebrate, we find the joy.

  A week filled with moments to celebrate and remember!

Posting late this week!  Writing this post was the carrot I dangled while I completed the rough draft for my Nerdy Book Club post.  I looked up the email this morning only to discover that I missed the deadline.
On to celebrations!  

1.  A new calling to stretch!
I never knew that choosing stretch as my OLW  for the year would lead me in this new direction.  I want to share that I was called to serve as Relief Society (women's organization) president for our ward of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  It's a gritty celebration because my dear friend just completed six years (the bishop promised that I would not be called to serve as long as she did) as our leader, and she leaves very big shoes to fill.  It's a gritty celebration because it means I'll be reordering priorities, and you may see less of me on my blog.  It's a gritty celebration because I have much to learn about placing the Lord first in my life,
about serving others, and about being unselfish.  
I celebrate the notes and phone calls of support and encouragement.

2.  More fall pics! 

Sorry, but you'll keep getting these until the last leaf falls. 

I'm totally enchanted by fall, year after year, tree after tree, leaf after leaf!

3.   Calendar quote for the last day of September!

"There is enchantment right in front of you, waiting for you to notice." - Janet Luhrs