The Liebster Award Times Four

Photo Credit: Leonard Cohen (Dr. H. Guy)

In one week in May, I received four nominations for the Liebster Award. Wow! Here, at long last, are my responses.

First, thanks to these special followers for their gracious nominations. I do appreciate your interest in my blog.

• Lynne Revette Butler  Making the most of every day.
• Slightly Twisted Jane   Bookishly Me.
• Ambrozya   Ambro shines a light in the darkness.
• Tiny White Cottage  Cottage Grove House

I wrote about the Liebster Award last year when JudytheMorgan nominated my baby blog for this honor in April of 2012. “So a person who bestows the Liebster award on someone else’s blog is showing love to another person.”

• L is for Liebster Award  2012/04/14
• M is for Mentions and Mash-Ups 2012/04/16

Check out this new design for the Liebster Award.

Here are the simpler rules for my first Liebster: (Note that the award has gone through various permutations over the years.)

• Thank your Liebster Blog Award presenter on your blog.
• Link back to the blogger who awarded you.
• Copy & paste the blog award on your blog.
• Reveal your 5 blog picks.
• Let them know you chose them by posting on their blog.

This year’s rules add several items:

• Tell 11 things about yourself.
• Answer 11 questions that your tagger has asked.
• Choose 11 people and link them in your post.
• Ask eleven questions for the bloggers you nominate.

None of us need extra work and answering 44 questions will take some time. Therefore, I propose that we eliminate the questions section of this award. The purpose of the award is to encourage readers to visit other newish blogs and to give encouragement through recognition. No one wants to write an overly long post, and no one wants to read one.

With all due respect to this award,  I will tell 11 things about myself and nominate 11 bloggers. The 44 questions will have to wait.

11 Things about me: (This includes answers to some of the 44 questions!)

1.  I love cats, cats, cats.
2.  I am a New Jersey girl, but I have lived in Massachusetts, California, Alaska, and Hong Kong, Now I am back in NJ near my family.
3.  Education is my business, and I was a special education teacher, and then an elementary school principal.
4. I am a life-long learner and keep my hands in education although I am officially retired.
5. Yes, I have an AARP  card.
6. I get Senior Citizen’s discounts at Wendy’s where you can get the best chili.
7. Blogging is my new favorite pastime, although I also like swimming, water aerobics, walking, photography, travel, cooking, reading….
8. I sing in the Margate Community Church choir.
9. Did I mention I love to travel? Anywhere, anytime. Italy, France, England, Spain. Asia. Wherever. I’m ready.
10. I love daisies of any kind.
11. I have been married to My-Heck-of-a-Guy (MyHOG) for almost nine years, but I have known him for over fifty years.

That’s enough about me!

Here are my 11 nominees for the Liebster Award.

1. Karen at KEKE Photography. Off the Hook: thread designs by KEKE
2. Cindy Sabulis: Writing’s Not For Weenies!
3. Michael J. Cahill  A ragged soul investigating the human condition.
4. Jackie P. Change for the Better Me. Recipes and stories to help make a healthy change easier.
5. Sangeeta, Life is a Vacation (photo blog)
6. Michael Lai, retiree diary, a photo blog
7. Scribblings from an Aspiring Author 
8. Michelle Wallace: Writer in Transit The journey never ends.
9. Rgemom” Three’s a Herd   “You can’t make this stuff up.” This blog has heart.
10. J.A. Ward Writer: There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.
11. Jenn Scribbles: The Musings of a Writing Mom

Nominees, I advise you to do the shortened response as well, otherwise you will spend more time on this than necessary!

The Last Meow

Now we are really tired. But don’t we deserve a kitty award? We have been good, and we didn’t pester you while you worked on this post. How about it? A little measly award for us? Okay?

Hey, lookee there. A double award. Awesome.

Meow for now. =<^:^>=

Blogger Friends, Blogger Awards, and Childhood Pictures

Blogging brings new friends. We read about each other’s worlds in posts and connect.

Bloggers encourage each other. Getting over the hurdles of setting up a blog and then posting regularly is time consuming and more than occasionally frustrating. Bloggers know how discouraging it can be when photos don’t fall into place the way you want them to, widgets fight with you over their placement, links don’t link, picture captions disappear, or sneaky typos infiltrate your newly pressed post.

If you have a problem, you only need to ask another blogger for help. Some bloggers get special notice for their techie skills, and Laird Sapir, blogger-techie-advisor-friend, is one of those bloggers who’s always willing to help a newbie.

Bloggers know the way it is, and they support each other with comments… and…*tah dah*…*drum roll*… awards.

My blogger friend, Jacqui Talbot, recently passed on the Very Inspiring Blooger Award to me.  Thanks, Jacqui. Your posts inspire me, too.

Jacqui, a teller of tales of the Choctaw Nation, is a gifted story weaver.

Jacqui also passed on the rules for this award:

1. Link back to the blogger who nominated you. Here’s the link to Jacqui Talbot’s blog. Go read it. Not only does she retell Choctaw Tales, she writes about things she has learned the hard way. She has lessons for all of us.
2. Post the blog award on your page. Done. It’s posted on my blog page (after a tussle with the widget control master, but hahaha, I won!)
3. Tell 7 facts about yourself, nominate 15 other blogs for the award, and let the nominees know they have been chosen.

Okay, here goes. Seven Facts…. I thought I would share some (undated) childhood photos.

1. This is the only baby picture of me that I have.  William Asbury Cooper, son of Rev. Edward Cooper of West Baptist Church of Vineland, NJ, holds me when I am only a few months old. I don’t know the backstory on this picture since our family attended the Presbyterian Church for as long as I can remember.

2. My nickname as a child was “Nan,” although I never knew how I got this name. My brothers teased me by calling me Nannygoat. I hated that, but I got even with at least one member of the family. I called my brother Bill, “Billygoat.” Here’s a picture of Billygoat and his ukelele.

Christmas, circa 1950 (?)

3. I loved playing with dollies when I was little. Here is my newest dolly at Christmas, 1950 (?)

Bill, Bobby, Janice (front)
Judie, Charles (back)

4. Here is a picture of me with Thomas-soo-lo, the family cat, when I was a little tyke. Thomas-soo-lo loved napping on Daddy’s lap as he read the newspaper after dinner. He condescended to cuddle up on other laps when Daddy was not around, and he tolerated me carrying him around the house and yard. Other times, Thomas-soo-lo wandered the farm looking for tasty, four-legged tidbits to snack on.

• 

  Thomas-soo-lo, the family cat, with Janice

  5. I went to Spring Road School, a two-room schoolhouse, through the fourth grade.

  

  Spring Road School, Vineland, NJ

  Our classroom desks looked like those below. Mom snagged a desk when Spring Road School finally closed down, and all of us country farm kids had to ride the bus to bigger schools in town.

  

  Photo: Share the Memories. Old classroom in Milwaukee with desks similar to those at Spring Road School. These students are practicing an air raid drill.

  6. As a girl scout, I wore my hand-me-down scout uniform, while all the other girls had the newer style. Poor me. Being the youngest female sibling of six, hand-me-downs made up the bulk of my wardrobe.

  

  Here are the six Kroey girls. (L to R, back row: Joyce, Joanne, Shirley. L to R front row: Beverley, Judie, Janice) See that littlest one with the knobby knees? That’s me.

  

7. The first car I could claim was an old black Chevy. It was passed down through the sibling ranks over the years, and it was as old as the hills. It even has a song written about it. I have been blamed for writing that song, but I’ll never tell. You may soon read about this family relic car  in an upcoming post.

So there it is. My childhood. Did it bring back any memories for you?

The last requirement for the Very Inspiring Blogger Award is a bit tricky. I read so many good blogs that it is hard to narrow the list down. But I’ll give it a shot. (Note: taglines written as bloggers show them. Some prefer capital letters; some do not.)

1. Shannon Messenger: books, ramblings, and plenty of shenanigans

2. Rhonda Hopkins: Where Reality and Fiction Collide

3. Barbara Forte Abate: Scribbling Outside the Lines

4. Sara Walpert Foster: Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition

5. Myndi Shafer: Blogging Barefoot. one stray sock away from insanity

6. Cora Ramos: Drinking the eclectric cool-aid

7. Ellen Gregory: to beyond and back

8. Fabio Bueno: Diamonds and Rust

9. Elizabeth Fais: Where the awesome begins. . .

10. Shay Fabbro: Fun, Family, and Time Travel Accessories

11.Karen Pullen: Cubicle Escapee

12. Siri Paulson: everyday enchantments

13. Rabia Gale: writers at play

14. Nikki McCormack: Dancing on the Treetops in the Forest of My Mind

15. Susi M. Nonnemacher: Barefoot Bliss

And here’s one bonus blog!

16. Laird Sapir: Shabby Chic Sarcasm

I hope you enjoy these blogs as much as I do.