Celebrate This Week: A Week's Vacation!

 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.  Sunshine

We've enjoyed days and days of sunshine.

It's glorious to wake to the sun streaming

through the window, to walk with friends,

and to notice the beauty in our world.  

This crying tree was discovered

by Jan on one of our recent walks. 

2.  Clouds

We've lived in the Northwest for almost twenty years.

I'm thrilled that our extended ten day forecast shows

clouds and rain for every single day with only two 

days when the sun might peek through the clouds.

And no more days of 80+ degree weather.

(That's worrisome in May.)

I guess celebrating rain and clouds makes

me a true citizen of the Northwest.

3.  Poetry Reading

I was invited by a local poet to participate in 

an evening at Island Books.  I agonized over what to share

in my allotted ten minutes on the program.

My daughter said to focus on just three books -

an impossible task.  So I took a bin of books (36)

and shared poems from some of my favorite children's authors.

What I didn't anticipate was how much I would enjoy

the rest of the evening after being asked to go first.

We heard from Christopher Jamick, author of Not Aloud;

Laura Totten, teacher and founder of the high school Poetry Club;

and David D. Horowitz, author of Cathedral and Highrise.

(Laura, Christopher, David, and me)

I'm looking forward to connecting Laura's high school

Poetry Club to our middle school book club.

4.  Embracing the Slow at Books, Brownies, and Beyond

Maybe it's the call of the sun, maybe it's the time of the 

school year, maybe it's due to the past two weeks of state testing,

but our numbers at book club have dwindled recently.  

Our attendees have been in single digits and we've enjoyed

our time together in new ways - reading alone, sharing titles,

chatting with friends, and looking at poetry books together. 

This past week, Elsa, Katie, and I explored my blog

trying to figure out how to add "tags" to my entries

(something I've wanted to do for a long time).  

It turns out they're called "labels" in blogspot. 

Elsa kept a running list of labels we created and

even sent me a list of entries with original poetry. 

5.  A Week's Vacation!

Yes, I'm taking a week off from subbing.  It's been a busy spring

and I'm looking forward to diving back into some 

neglected projects at home and enjoying a bit more time to read. 

I'm reading Rules for Books, Brownies, and Beyond,

My Brilliant Friend for our quarterly google chat book club

(with two friends who've moved away),

The Shepherd's Life for my monthly book club,

and Bettyville just for fun.