An award!

Last week the delightful Carole Anne Carr gave me the "Life is Good" award.  First, I have to tell you to venture on over to Carole's blog.  Carole is a simply lovely lady.  She is always encouraging, very responsive to her followers, and a full time writer to boot!  I get a lot of smiles from her blog.

The "requirements" of this award are linking to the giver (um, yeah, see above), telling something about myself and passing it on.

So, something about me.  I think I'll address my overly sunny online persona since it is the "Life is Good" award.  I've devoted my blog to trying to lift up spirits and inspire others.  Am I this happy and upbeat in my "real" life?  Well, yes and no.  I try to be this person everyday.  I believe wholeheartedly in the goodness of life and people.  I am blessed a million times over and I try to remember that.  For every bad horrible thing in life, there is an awesome beautiful thing and why not focus on the latter?

I get down.  I have horrible days.  I have awful stuff happen.  I scream at my kids sometimes when I should be patient.  I have pity parties for myself when things don't go my way.  I actually get stress-induced hives when I don't deal with stress in a good way.

But online, I can be the best part of me.  I can be optimistic.  I can be a cheerleader.  I can be helpful and happy and enthusiastic.

It comes down to this.  Shortly after I had my second son I was having a conversation with someone about bringing children into a world where there is so much evil and so many problems.  I said, "the only way the world will get better is if good people raise children to be good people."  The more good we put out into the world, the better.  And that is what I try to do with my writing online and in picture book form.

So, I'm passing this award to a couple folks I think understand the "Life is Good" philosophy.

Julie at Write Up My Life
Susanna at Susanna Leonard Hill