{"id":886,"date":"2012-12-21T21:06:37","date_gmt":"2012-12-22T01:06:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/?p=886"},"modified":"2012-12-21T21:35:44","modified_gmt":"2012-12-22T01:35:44","slug":"christmas-letter-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/?p=886","title":{"rendered":"Christmas Letter 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"

Merry Christmas! It’s been a good year! As the years go by, I’m losing physical addresses, so I like to post my Christmas letter on the web to send to my online friends. I always like summing up the year and remembering the ways I’ve been blessed.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>2012 is the year where Tim\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s age has 3 prime factors<\/a>, Josh\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s age has 4 prime factors<\/a>, and my age has 5 prime factors<\/a>! Woo-hoo! But even more exciting than that was Tim\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s graduation from Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. He is now a student at the College of William & Mary in beautiful Williamsburg, Virginia, not too far away, and nice and close to his Dad. It seems like a great fit. Students don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have to declare their major until the end of their Sophomore year, and he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s taking classes in English, Computer Science, Physics, and other subjects he finds interesting. <\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Josh is all grown up and settling down in Portland, Oregon. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m a little jealous \u00e2\u20ac\u201c I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m going to have to find lots of excuses to visit.<\/p>\n

And I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m so happy in my Librarian career. In September, I promoted to Youth Services Manager<\/a> at City of Fairfax Regional Library, the branch where I was already working. My two years not (officially) working in youth services showed me that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s definitely where I belong.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Looking back on the year, that career kept me busy traveling all over the country. I went to ALA Midwinter Meeting in Dallas<\/a> in January and met up with a good friend. Then I went to PLA Conference in Philadelphia in March and drove through lovely Longwood Gardens on the way home. Next was ALA Annual Conference in Anaheim, California \u00e2\u20ac\u201c I got to stay with my sister Becky, and I stayed an extra week to see my family and some long-time friends.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nWith Three of my Sisters in Long Beach<\/p>\n

Still not done, I went to New York City in September to KidLitCon<\/a> \u00e2\u20ac\u201c for bloggers who write about children\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s books. And I finished it off with VLA Conference in Williamsburg in October, with a chance to see Tim already in college a month. Hmm. No wonder I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not feeling any urge to travel for the holidays!<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m also getting involved with children\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s book awards. I went to a seminar about book evaluation committees<\/a> in January, and have been active in Capitol Choices, a DC-area group, all year. Now I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m finishing the year on a panel for the Cybils Awards, choosing the best Middle Grade Science Fiction and Fantasy books of the year. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so much fun knowing I \u00e2\u20ac\u0153should\u00e2\u20ac\u009d be reading!<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m still so thankful to be alive and functioning after last year\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s stroke<\/a> and am much more healthy than this time last year.<\/p>\n

I do feel very blessed and have so many reasons to rejoice! Wishing you a joyful and blessed Christmas,<\/p>\n

Sondy Eklund<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Merry Christmas! It’s been a good year! As the years go by, I’m losing physical addresses, so I like to post my Christmas letter on the web to send to my online friends. I always like summing up the year and remembering the ways I’ve been blessed. 2012 is the year where Tim\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s age has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,27,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-letters","category-librarians"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}