Okay-It wandered in!

The Tuesday Slice of Life is hosted by the Two Writing Teachers blog.  Go there to visit the other"slicers"! I'm looking forward to more great posts from Stacey, Tara, Dana, Betsy, Anna, and Elisabeth!

  Hurrah!  The Cybil's finalists are HERE!  Great lists of books to discover!

It's been a struggle for me to continue with my One Little Word these past two years.  I signed up for the class, purchased the pages, found a nice binder, and created pages through January, then stopped. During the years, I thought sometimes of my OLW, but not with much enthusiasm for doing anything. Sometimes I was too busy, or I made myself be busy with other things.  It's rather like my sewing. I used to sew a lot, and am fairly competent at it, but days hold only so many hours, and I prefer reading, writing and working for my job, so I do have time to sew, if I make the time, but I'd rather be elsewhere.  
           Back to the OLW.  I've read many posts in the past week about people choosing or discovering and the posts have been inspiring. I loved hearing from Dana recently, and remember Claire and Tammy's, Terje's, Deb's, Jennifer M.'s…  I really do love the idea!  But this time I thought I wouldn't do it. I don't have a good track record as you can see.

Reading - Making Terrific Plans for 2014

 It's Monday! What are you Reading? is hosted by Jen at TEACH.MENTOR.TEXTS, and shared with Ricki and Kellee at UNLEASHING READERS.   

         And, also visit Sheila at BOOK JOURNEYS for more reviews. Thanks to all these blogs we are able to discover many, many new books!  Thanks Ricki, Kellee, Jen and Sheila!

 Tweet! at #IMWAYR

New challenges!  See the sidebar for all three.  Today I'm checking off a couple of books that are on my TBR list.  Week by week this year, I hope I can find time to read all that are on my list found here in this post.  If you're interested in having a group help you keep track of your reading, go to Carrie Gelson's post here to discover what it's all about and who's participating (tweet at #MustReadin2014), or to Gathering Books with Myra, Fats & Iphigene to see their challenge!  

                   The Latinos in Kidlit Challenge is here!

     For contemplating challenges here in this new year when many are making resolutions and signing up for challenges, enjoy the quote!  "I hope everyone who is reading this is having a really good day.  And if you are not, just know that in every new minute that passes you have an opportunity to change that."  Gillian Anderson

Here are books that I completed for the challenges:

Allegiant – Veronica Roth

           Finishing a series over several years is challenging, especially since I read each of the first two books when they first were published. Also, considering this includes a main group that belong to a faction named "dauntless", my "daunting" task is to write about a book series I thoroughly enjoyed without giving much away to those who haven't read number three!   I feel that sometimes this particular book was a bit slow going.  Some details seemed to be repeated more than I needed, and I wanted to "get on with" the story.  There was less action and perhaps that was part of what I missed. None of this prevented me from enjoying the book thoroughly, however.  

Sunshine All Around

Denver has an average of about 245 days with sun or part sun each year.  Our weather is mercurial for sure.  Consider this from the Post news of Friday and Saturday:  With near-record highs and plenty of sunshine during the day followed by multiple inches of snow overnight, Colorado weather once again can't make up its mind.

It was beautiful Friday, with the high reaching 62 degrees at 2:15 p.m., which was 3 degrees shy of the record high set in 1918.  Saturday will reach a high of about 20 degrees! 
            Today a high of 16, then by Tuesday, back to 50.  But almost always sun!

My sunshiny days of the year!

I imagine many of you have seen the posts circulating about sharing some Sunshine by tapping a few bloggers that are in your network.  This time, I'm sending some sunshine to a few blogger friends!  Here is how it works!

Wandering!

 Thanks to Ruth  at DiscoverPlayBuild,  for beginning this Saturday tradition of sharing our celebrations.   

The finalists were announced on Jan. 1st!  You can see the list here! 

          These final days of vacation held more good, but small things.  My son, daughter-in-law and grandson left a week ago to avoid snow, and the house was quiet enough to echo! Music helped!  So I got busy, and, in my mind, celebrated all the good things that happened during Christmas week.  As I put most decorations away, did laundry, and munched on leftovers, I relived family meals and laughs and shopping we did after Christmas (NOT Black Friday).  It's been a sl-o-o-w second week, including much reading and doing some other things I just wanted to do.

Poetry Friday - At The Beginning Again

          I Think In Poems starts the year for Poetry Friday as the host!  Thank you, Betsy!

           First, I want to congratulate and share a link to the Cybil's Finalists in ALL the categories.  What a tremendous amount of work the Round One Panelists had to do, although the reading is a pleasure!  I have the honor of serving again this year as a second round judge in poetry, and look forward to examining the following wonderful books, although it's always so hard to "eat" just one.  Congratulations to the poetry finalists, wonderful to see!

Finalists!