Coming In For a Landing!

Tonight's picture has something to do with two things that I/we have done today. The first on my part was rather a not thought-out move. I set my cell phone last night to be my alarm clock...well, when I went to turn it off it slipped out of my hands and went under the bed. So I reached under the bed (while I was still in the bed) to retrieve it and the cell phone was farther than I realized and I had to reach farther and...well, I ended up falling out of the bed. This little bird makes a much better landing than I! I fell in between the wooden side of our bed and the large basket that I keep books in that is on the floor next to my side of the bed. On top of that my feet stayed encased in the covers so I was sort of trussed up! (I'm so glad that I am the one who takes pictures around here! But I couldn't rouse Woody who was downstairs so...guess pictures wouldn't have been taken anyway!) I wondered for a few minutes how long I would have to be there till Woody came upstairs but in short order I was able to get my feet untangled and managed to get myself out from in between the bed and the basket. I hope that I have at least brought a smile to a face or two...as it has made me laugh just trying to type the description of what happened and can just imagine what all of you are picturing as you read this! I will say that at first I didn't feel any ill effects from falling, but this evening I am a bit sore in several places...but my discomfort could be from the extreme cold temps that we have had today or...it could be that a weather front is on its way. Transverse Myelitis never lets me know whether there is something physical causing my aches and pains...it masks a lot of ills!!!!!! Enough said...but I'll bet some are snickering over my morning plight (and rightly so!)! (After thinking about this post I have come back in with a further explanation about this basket that I got caught between...it is quite large and quite heavy with books, magazines, etc...so you see it barely budged when I fell between it and the bed...I really was wedged in!)

I also used my photo software to make tonight's picture look like a painting. That is a big reminder that we had art class today and we PAINTED!!!!!!!!! I made five children very happy today! They love to paint. Right at the end of our class Nathan and Elijah came over and Elijah came up and looked in the school room. I asked him if he wanted to paint and you can guess his answer! I had one more smock so we got it on him and we got him a place to paint and paint he did! Today's lesson for the four older children was on the color wheel. Their first painting was to create a color wheel that included the primary colors and then the secondary colors. They did a good job and enjoyed mixing the primary colors to make the secondary colors. Several of their papers actually had a color wheel on it when finished...all had managed to have the primary colors and the secondary colors! Then I gave them another paper and they could paint whatever. I was the paint distributor...squeezing out dabs of whatever primary color they had run out of. Lots of "Grammy, I need more..."(fill in the blank with red, blue, yellow, or white!). A good time was had by all. But boy do I have a huge mess to clean up before we can have school in the schoolroom tomorrow. So far haven't felt up to the challenge! We went too long and it was time for Graham's sewing lesson so we didn't do the best job of cleaning up...we'll do better next time. They were having such fun that I didn't think to stop in enough time to do the clean-up.

Woody has read, watched a bit of TV, looked through some recipe books to find some new recipes using ingredients that we have on hand...and in the end I made my tried-and-true chili recipe. Tasted very good on this very cold day! It got down to 19F in the wee hours of the morning and never left the 30's today. I never left the house...trying to avoid too much direct contact with the cold temps. Cold temps and I just don't get along! Woody left a while ago to walk to the Prayer Room at church...he left fairly well bundled up...he needed to...it is already back down to 26F.

I have my final count on how many books I read in 2011...54. I finished the 54th on New Year's Eve. Today I brought my list up to date with the last book and decided to do something that I always say that I will do...add up the number of pages that I have read during the year. Not only do I keep a list of titles and authors that I read, I also write down how many pages are in each book. So my grand total for this year is.........drum roll...........18,909 pages! That averages out to 350 pages per book. The longest book that I read was 725 pages and the shortest was 64 pages. This list doesn't include the photography or sewing how-to books that I have read as I often don't read every word of those so don't include them in my list unless I do read the entire thing. I do have another list that I add them to if they are really good and I might like to peruse them again. Some of the books that I have read are paperbacks...so small pages (but usually equally as small words!), some of the books that I have read are Large Print...so more pages than a "regular print" book. But my record keeping is all in fun so it really doesn't matter! Just a quirk that I like to do and I definitely like having a list of all the books that I have read...at least all that I have read "since" I started keeping my books-read list. I will type this year's book list into the computer in a data base so that these will end up with other books by the same author that I have read previously...the list is alphabetized by authors (librarian in me comes out!).

Oh, another drum roll, please..................I finished sorting my pictures on New Year's Day...and at this point the only photos that aren't sorted are the ones on the camera that I took today. I know that for a while I will sort as I download...but as in the past that habit probably won't last and I will be faced once again with a daunting task!