A proud mama moment.

Yesterday there was a party at Rachel's school for all the kids who wrote books for the Young Authors & Illustrators contest.

Have I ever mentioned how much I loooove the Young Authors program?

Love. It.

The fact that my girl is following in my footsteps as a writer is pretty cool, too. She is always writing little stories and asking me to read with her (double awesome). She worked on her Young Authors book every night for about three weeks. It was 20 pages long! It was the true story of when we lost (and then someone found) our dog, Ladybug. I wish I had taken some pictures of her illustrations to share with you here because, for an 8-year-old kiddo, they were pretty awesome.

Perhaps that's why she received the Illustration Award!

In case there was any confusion, she circled "Illustration Award" on the certificate. That's the bottom one. The certificate on the top is "the one everybody got for writing a book," as she said.

She wasted no time getting those babies up on the refrigerator when she got home from school.

And on the small chance that someone miss the certificates and head straight to adding something to the grocery list on the other door of the fridge, this:

Yay, indeed! That's my girl.