Choosing Joy

This past week was a normal week with highs and lows, moments worth remembering and moments worth forgetting. And having lived almost a half century, I have finally figured out some things. Life consists of a few really spectacular events like the day I graduated from college, the day I got married, and the day my daughter was born. It also consists of a few really horrific events like the day my first husband died, the day my best friend died, the day my father died, and the day I was in an automobile accident. But the really important events, the events that define my life, are the many moments in between. The every day moments, that while possibly not extraordinary, are the ones that give me opportunity to choose joy and see beauty in God's creation.

The good moments that bring a smile to my face along with the bad moments that I can allow to ruin my day or I can decide to face with a positive outlook. Joyful and beautiful moments like birds visiting our feeders, making art on a cookie canvas, weeding the garden and enjoying the flowers, and Easter with my family.

And bad moments like the fact that Easter Sunday was the fourth anniversary of my father's trip to heaven. But as I mentioned before, I had a choice. A choice to either wallow in my sorry and loss or a choice to remember the multitude of wonderful memories I have from the years I was able to spend with my father. I chose to remember.

And it never ceases to amaze me how often I pick a random book out of my stack from the library and it coincides with something that has gone on in my week. This week's random book was called Here in the Garden and it was the story of a boy choosing to remember the beautiful moments he once shared with a pet rabbit. And although the rabbit was missed beyond measure, the boy chose joy. He chose to think of all the wonderful days they had been able to share.

Well, that about wraps it up for this week. Join me next week for another exciting episode, same crazy time, same crazy channel. Also be sure to drop by and join the Literacy Musings Monday Blog Hop where you will find other great blogs, or my personal website, Fun With Aileen, where you will find more on reading, writing, and my very own early grade Fern Valley chapter book series and my Quack and Daisy picture book series. And finally, you can find me on twitter @AileenWStewart if you want an extremely brief glimpse into my days. 

It's Garden Time!

It's that time of year again where excitement over our yearly garden gently wraps each of us with a blanket of anticipation. My husband tills up the clean, fresh dirt in our raised beds, I search for the right plants, and Emily helps plant, weed, and water. 

Just this past weekend, I purchased two beefsteak tomato plants.  Now I just need to find the Sun Sugar cherry tomatoes we plant, decide if we want onions and lettuce, and make my rounds at the Amish garden stands to find flowers for my flower beds.

As is my custom, I made a trip to the library to gather a large stack of books for reading and reviewing and decided a couple of them should be about gardens. The first book I read was The Vegetables Go To Bed by Christopher King. It's an older book, but if you can't find it at your local library, there are used copies available at Amazon.

Told in rhyme, The Vegetables Go To Bed, tells the tale of vegetables in the garden who are mostly reluctant to go to sleep for the night. The illustrations are what make this book truly spectacular. The first letter on each page is a special letter with a small picture of some kind and the vegetables have gentle faces and hands giving them the appearance of being alive. Very subtly, the story of the vegetables getting ready for bed and growing while they sleep, parallels to the way children are reluctant for bed and grow while they sleep. I think this would be a great book for children five to eight.

The next book I read was Cecil's Garden by Holly Keller. This is also an older book, but well worth hunting down. Of the two, this book was  my favorite. Cecil, his brother, and his sister set out to plant a garden but it is only big enough to hold five rows of vegetables. Unfortunately, they have six packets of seeds. Since they can't decide which seeds to eliminate they end up going into the house without planting anything. Cecil decides to go for a walk and finds both his mouse friends and his mole friends arguing amongst themselves as well. Cecil decides he just doesn't like arguing and he is going home to plant his garden. The creative solution he comes up with is very exciting and well worth finding out about.

Well, that about wraps it up for this week. Join me next week for another exciting episode, same crazy time, same crazy channel. And feel free to drop by my personal website, Fun With Aileen, any day of the week for even more on reading, writing, my very own early grade chapter book, Fern Valley, and my soon to be released sequel, Return To Fern Valley, coming summer of 2014! I'm also on twitter @AileenWStewart if you want an extremely brief glimpse into my days.