Allie Pleiter on birthdays

Last weekend, I turned 50.  Sort of.

Actually, I turned 49 1/2, but we had a party anyway.  Here’s why:  my husband turned 50 last November, and I’ll turn 50 this coming November.  Rather that roust up two parties, we held one party exactly halfway between our two 50ths.  We called it our “50-50%-50 Party.”  Actually, if you want to get technical, we celebrated our 100th--and someone gave us a 100th birthday card.  I hope I get to use it for real one day.

I love to celebrate.  If celebrating were a spiritual gift, it’d be my primary one.  Actually, I think it is...rather like encouragement in a party dress.  

I’ve told people before I think of myself as God’s disco ball; reflecting His light to jazz up any occasion and make everyone feel like it’s okay to get just a little bit silly.  I have a little mirrored mobile handing in my kitchen to remind me of that personal metaphor.

It was comfortable to mark this milestone because it wasn’t really there, and I have to admit I’m okay with turning 50 this year.  

Well, talk to me again in November and we’ll see if my positive attitude sticks....

What about you?  Have you had a milestone birthday recently?  How did you feel about it?

By the way, if you’re in the Raleigh North Carolina area, come see me at the Carolina Fiber Fest this weekend!  I’ll be giving away 100 copies of HOMEFRONT HERO!

Graduation Season

Congratulations graduates!

Hi All! Charlotte Carter here.

My husband and I recently journeyed to Northern California to celebrate the high school graduation of our oldest granddaughter Rachel and her cousin Josh. What an important milestone for those two young people and their 140 classmates. And Rachel, like me years ago, was really ready to move on to a new phase of her life.

During the ceremony I was struck by how many ‘graduations’ or ‘milestones’ the young people in the class of 2011 will experience in their lifetimes.

Hopefully, college graduation will be the next biggie. Then comes the first job out of school (and hopes for an economy that is thriving with opportunities).

Milestones to be celebrated keep on coming in both personal and professional lives – the first promotion and moving up the career ladder, engagement, wedding, the extraordinary birth of the first child (and all the subsequent children).

There seems to be no end to the days we mark as special in our memories: the first apartment, the first house, the first grandchild.

(For an author, the sale of the first book is a GIGANTIC milestone!)

Each of these steps involve a NEW BEGINNING, and maybe that’s what we ought to call them instead of a graduation or even a milestone.

So my heartfelt congratulations to Rachel and Josh for their high school graduation and my sincere wish that they will experience many exciting and wonderful NEW BEGINNINGS in the years to come.

Love, Grandma Char.....

What New Beginning do you remember most clearly? What New Beginning are you looking forward to in the near future?

Books that leave you smiling -
Big Sky Reunion, available now -
Big Sky Family, 11/2011 -
New Beginnings, Guideposts Books, 12/2011 -
www.CharlotteCarter.com