Anniversary Smanniversary

For our anniversary Michael had a painting made for me. It was done by Nate Ashby, and it is the coolest thing EVER.



Everything in the picture represents something memorable from our 10 years of marriage.

For example, we got engaged on Halloween so there is a mummy proposing to a witch. There may be more symbolism in that than I'd like to talk about.

There is a blue bird on one of the buildings because when Maddie was young we lived in the second story a dinky little apartment by Pioneer Park. A lot of homeless people sleep at this park and one night a drunk homeless man started wandering up and down the street yelling that he wanted everyone to call him Blue Bird. It was pretty hot that night so we didn't want to close our windows.

Needless to say the painting is pretty damn cool. You should come and see it in person.

The Art Expo

The boy and the girl turned in collages they made for the art expo at school. The theme was "Dreams are Free" or something like that.


Madison wants to be a writer so she did a collage all about the BFG (one of her favorite books). She made most of it out of an old copy of the BFG that was falling apart and ripped. Then at the bottom she put "I dream to write what others read to dream." It's very cute.


My favorite parts are the little girl's hair, and the heart she added onto the book. You can't really tell but the green paper she chose to make the clouds has little swirls in it like the swirls she made with the glitter. I love it! I absolutely LOVE it.

Kai decided that because he really wants to be a veterinarian he would draw a picture of him putting a cast on a dog. He wanted to do a collage too and decided he could draw the parts of the pictures separately and put them together like a puzzle. So that's what he did.

He was adamant that the dog had to be a black and white boxer. But he didn't really know what boxers look like so he looked at a lot of pictures of boxers on the internet before drawing his.

Then he drew the table and himself. Because he was drawing all the pictures separately he had a hard time judging the scale of each image. The picture he drew of himself was ended up being too short to reach the dog on the table. I suggested he redraw it and he said, "Don't worry mom, I'll just make him a stool." And he did.

Unfortunately this picture might be more realistic than he'd like as I see a lot of stools in his future. My fault entirely . . . I know.



BUT Have you ever seen a better looking boxer? Don't you just love the stool and The crazy hair he made with cut up rubberbands? It's SO him I have to smile every time I look at it.

Oh and for your viewing pleasure . . . Chase. Because heaven forbid I take a picture of the other kids and not take a picture of him.

Mormon Art

I am still trying to rescue my house from the Christmas aftermath. I am almost done and have several large mostly full storage tubs to show for my efforts. My Christmas decorations are being replaced with my normal everyday decorations, and frankly, it is nice to see them again.














First we have the print of Jesus with a crown of thorns. Then the small resin St. Francis, and lastly, the iron cross.

I know, I'm a Mormon so I am supposed to have nice pictures of Jesus blessing children (preferably painted by Greg Olsen) in my house. I'm not against the happy, child blessing Jesus, he just doesn't go with my decor. The art I have in my home is a matter of personal artistic preference. To prove my point I give you the following exhibits:

Exhibit A: The Madonna with Green Eyes (I drew this when I was 8)


Exhibit B: The Resurrection (also drawn when I was 8)



If you look close you will see the graves of Mark Antony and Cleopatra that have not yet opened. I have also put a nurse in Hell. Even 8 year olds know that not all nurses are nice.

So So So Sad. . .

My husband surprised me today with a fantastic original painting. I love it. But I almost cried when I opened it and found it had taken a beating in the mail.


Close-up please


There were other dings and nicks and cracks, but this was the worst of it.

Don't you just love that painting? How sad is that?

Whistler's Mother

Seeing as Madison was my first child, I was anxious she be prepared when she started Kindergarten. I was a little less anxious with the boy and I figure by the time Davis starts Kindergarten, I'll be excited if he knows his name.

But being the over anxious mother I was, I bought the book her school uses for their general curriculum. It is called What Your Kindergartner Needs to Know. I decided I would be the fantastic mom that I am, and we would pick a subject from the book each week, talk about it, do some projects, and maybe even go on a field trip. If I followed through with it, she would be very well prepared to start Kindergarten.

I wanted to start easy, so I picked a section about art. We were going to have a discussion, then a painting project, then we were going to go to a museum. How awesome is that! We started the discussion and we talked about how artists use colors to express emotions. The book had two paintings to compare, the first was Whistler's Mother and the other was a Degas ballerina.


Just like the book instructed, we talked about emotions and colors, and how they work together. It seemed to be going very well. Then I asked her, based on the colors he used, what kind of a woman did she think Whistler's mother was. She told me that his mom was probably a lot like me, and if he had painted his dad he probably would have used the same colors Degas used. She went on to explain that dads are more fun than moms, because dads want to all the fun things that moms never ever want to do.

Nice.

So every once in awhile I try to break out of my Whistler's Mother mold. Yesterday was one of these days. We decided to take the kids on the Polar Express. For the record, it was my idea. Yes, I thought it would be fun to gather all four kids onto a little, and very slow, train. And, shockingly, it wasn't horrible.

The trip was basically and hour and a half. They saw the north pole out the window and Santa gave each of them their own bell. Not surprisingly, Chase fell asleep quite awkwardly in the train windowsill. Awkward enough that one of the elves on the train asked if he was okay. He was.

Now, I'm not saying I'm going to do it again next year. But maybe the year after that, because, I'm fun damn it.

Teenage Mom Meets Dirty Old Man

When I was a kid my dad used to tell us that my mom was older than he was. I believed him. My mom told me that Gilbert dies at the end of Anne of Green Gables, or is it Anne of Avonlea? I don't remember. The point is, she told me he dies and I believed her.

So it really shouldn't be a surprise that a few years ago I told the boy that I was 25 and I was going to be 25 forever. At the time he was 3, Maddie was 5 and Michael was 29 so it really wasn't so bad. But he still believes me and I'm not about to correct him.

The only problem is that he likes to tell everyone our ages. The grocery store clerk, the doctor, the stranger in the parking lot, the nurse giving him his flu shot . . . no one is exempt.

"Hey guess what! I'm 5, and Maddie is 7, and Chase is 2 and Davis is 4 months, and my dad is 31 and my mom is 25."

As you can see, I have now become a teenage mom and Michael is toying with the idea of being a dirty old man. Everyone else keeps aging, so it gets worse every year.

I was just going through the boy's school folder and found this picture. It's a partial family portrait. He has gone the extra mile to write our ages on the pictures. Maddie is 7, Michael is 31, and I'm 25. See Michael's big nose? That is probably because he is getting so old. As I understand it, your nose and ears don't stop growing. I'm not sure who that is looking over Michael's shoulder. Maybe its the grim reaper.

Mental note: take out life insurance . . . .