A Little Time Out

Sometimes a girl just needs a little time-out from life, family, the household chores and noise and everything. So today, the girls (Shelly and I) bailed on everything else and found ourselves at B&N. With some tea, books, and colored pencils.

We spent a couple hours just enjoying the peace and quiet. We talked a little, we colored a little. We just relaxed and let everything move on around us while we forgot about the chores at home and the stresses of the upcoming week. And then we came back home and dove back into our lives. A little refreshed, and looking forward to the next time-out. Maybe soon. Hopefully not too far away.

Art Review

Shelly's art was selected, along with some of her classmates, to be displayed at the district office. What a nice display! (Shelly's is in the top row, with the bright blue sky and one lone tree.)

Eli had a creative answer to what animal's teeth he would want, and why. I love his illustration of himself with elephant's teeth. What do you think, good choice?

Shelly created a self portrait as if she had been a girl arriving at Ellis Island in 1892, I got to see this at school recently. I tried to encourage her to use this idea for a short story but she didn't take the bait. She's got more important things to do.

Eli Art

Graham Says...

Well, it's in his imagination, and it's Halloween. And he's a bat.
He's an elephant in a stocking. (That says mom?) Yeah. That's right.
That's a candy cane (the purple and orange striped thing). And that's a butterfly but I didn't have time to color it (the black outlined thing at the bottom).
And that's a sun and I made a sky cause it's morning.
(The rectangles in the pink part) It's someone's house that someone's going to.

Oh that? We had to write a picture that...
First it's in the winter, I wear, it was blank and then it was blank again.
So then I filled it in with "hat" and "scarf". And then we have to write a picture, and then we had a substitute and we had to draw a picture with...
So there's snowpants, a jacket, a hat, but there is no scarf. And there's also mittens.

Archer Art

Archer's path through the woods reminds me of a place near our home. I'm not sure if that's what he had in mind, but it feels peaceful to me. I can close my eyes and picture his drawing, and picture this place that we've been to so often, and think of all the nice memories I have of that place. Nice work, Archer, very nice.

Shelly Art

Way back in the summer of 2015, Shelly enjoyed a couple weeks of art camp. I promised to share a taste of her work, and never really got around to it. But, after a year and a half, we've narrowed it down to her favorites, and here's a little taste of her work. Enjoy!

Facts About Owls

Males are a little smaller. 

At night owls pepels get bigger.

On most owls one ear is higher then the other.

~ Shelly 

Art in Action

These kids of mine, I don't know where they get their ideas but its incredible to watch what sprouts out of their creativity.

Shelly lost a tooth at school and brought it home in a little plastic box shaped like a tooth. The Tooth Fairy seems to be always running behind at our house, she didn't pick up Shelly's tooth the first night. Shelly spent a long time writing a note and asking me how to spell things. (Mom, how do you spell tooth? How do you spell please?) This all resulted in a beautiful note not from Shelly, but from Shelly's tooth.

Of course the Tooth Fairy could not ignore this plea, and made an exception to the rule, the rule of trading teeth for money.

Shelly, and Summer too, were so VERY excited when Shelly discovered on her pillow the note with Summer still attached, the new note from Ms. Fairy, and money! Shelly came running to me with her treasures and explained the whole thing. She ran to Dad to read Ms. Fairy's note to him. And then... Then Shelly says, "I wonder if I could be pen pals with the Tooth Fairy." I guess we'll have to wait and see how that plays out.

While Shelly was writing her note to Ms. Fairy, Elijah caught the creativity bug and asked if he could paint. He brought out the water colors and set to work. He brought his finished painting to me and asked me if I knew what it said. "I love you like the rainbow," I read to him. "Yets!" He said to me, very pleased that I could read it.

He came back with another and read it to me, "I love Mom and Dad and everybody in this world that I know."

Elijah sings this song in a quiet voice, I can barely hear him but he persists, the song long and drawn out, sweet and telling. "I love mom and dad... I like you... I want to go to the beach.... I really want to go on a train, oh I really want to go on a train, to the, to the beach...."

And while we're talking about E, I had the best conversation with him the other day. We recently received some postcards from Aunt Niecy in sunny Florida. I suggested to E that he send one of his paintings to his cousin Lulu and he frowned a little. He didn't think that was such a good idea. She's pretty little, and what if she ruins it? He started to dictate a letter to me in his most serious, grown-up voice. "Dear Yuyu. Here is a painting I made, but just don't yune (ruin) it." I told him I didn't think she'd ruin it on purpose, but he still wasn't sure about sharing his art with her. "You could send it to Nana," I suggested. He brightened up, "Yeah, cause her don't have babies!" This would guarantee that it wouldn't get ruined. "No, but she used to have babies. Do you know who her babies were?" This completely puzzled him, of course, and then I said, "Grandpa Craig used to be Nana's baby." His eyes grew wide, "That bampa is MY bampa!" I love those moments when the kids make connections and you can see the light go on in their eyes as they suddenly understand something new that wasn't there before.

Sometimes when nothing is going quite how you imagined would/should...
Sometimes when it seems like things are falling apart faster than you can put them back together, and the pieces don't quite fit with each other anymore...

You come across a little moment like this. And maybe its not quite as bad as you'd thought.

Great Grandpa's Farm

This Is Our Family

Behind us is our house on a hill.

This is a pirate, between his ship and a treasure yet to be found.

This is the handiwork of our always-drawing daughter. Next time I'll share the book that she's creating... More to come!

Painting Night

Archer's Weaving

In All Directions & Catching Up

There's a whole lot of planning that's required for one simple little weekend at Cub Scout Camp. Phone calls, text messages, notes on the calendar, check the calendar again, check the packing list four hundred times...

Tomorrow Archer and I will go to camp, Grandma Sue will come watch the other two until VBS starts and Shelly will go there, then Grandma will take E home with her. David will pick up Shelly from VBS and E will stay with Grandma until Saturday. Shell and Dad will have some special time together at an art studio painting a canvas and who knows what else. E will have some special time with Grandma, and Arch and I will be... I have no idea what we'll be doing, except this. It will be REALLY hot out, and we'll be outside all day long, baking in the sun. We get to sleep in a tent two nights in a row, enjoy camp food, and who knows what else. After about a hundred trips in and out of the house to pack more and more stuff in the trunk of my car, I'm already exhausted and we haven't even left yet! It should be a great weekend, my only small bit of sadness is that we'll each be off in different directions, E south with Grandma, Shell north to the art class, and Arch to the west at camp.

On another note, four of us spent the morning at the beach today with some friends, together, first overheating in the sun, then freezing in the water, back and forth until finally, at 1:00, the kids were "STARVING!!" and we had to get back to our air conditioned houses and food.

This week Shelly has been at VBS with her cousins while I hang out with the boys. On Monday we had another archery lesson. E enjoyed watching for blackberries along the trail as Archer tried out a range we hadn't seen before. This archery thing is kinda fun!

We also went to school to help with some weeding and playing in the sprinkler, followed by a visit to a friend's house for some playing in the mud, I mean more sprinklers.

Pictures courtesy of Mary

There was a visit to the office to water the new shrubs (brought back a LOT of memories for me doing the exact same thing when I was pretty close to Archer's age!), followed by a trip to DQ.

Way last week (I can hardly remember it) we went to the Pack Movie Night with all the other scouts. There were water games, great food, a piece of Swiss cheese on the pavement (?) and finally, we all settled down for the movie in the parking lot. Followed by a screaming loud game of "Cheese Touch!!" (you and I would know it as tag, you'll have to watch "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" to know what that's all about).

And finally, here are a few catch up pictures that I never got around to posting before...

Back in May, Archer had his spring concert, Bampa Bampa (that's Grandma and Grandpa, of course) came along, it was a bit rainy that day.

Thanks for the pics Bampa!

When we took our little road trip to the farm, David caught this nice fish, I was only just a little envious after spending the whole time reeling in weeds. :)

I guess we've been just a little busy over the last week or two?

Pond