Oh Happy Day...

Oh...we had the most happy day. I woke with a killer sore throat...we've all passed around a cold...and MW had spent a good bit of the early morning hours coughing...and T3 slept until 8:30...and so we stayed home and did not venture out in the drizzle to get to church. 

MW is old enough to know...and so we settled (that's me and the kiddos...T had to work) around the kitchen table, breakfast in hand and listened to a sermon by a precious friend. As the children finished their cereal we pulled out the crayons and coloring books and had the most wonderful, lazy, drizzly morning in the kitchen...coloring and listening to the gospel. At one point he made reference to the "Trinity: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit." MW spoke up and said, "he left one off: God Almighty."

So the kids dumped the bucket of crayolas out on the table and I...FINALLY...broke out the water colors T bought me at a two hundred year old art shop in Venice!!! I've been dreaming about making time to doodle and paint a little. But...it seems I tie up every possible free moment with other things...and so I grabbed my watercolor pad and the paints, and my hodge podge of watercolor tubes dating back high school...so I just started doodling. I kind of freak out when I get ready to "do art." I feel this pressure to make sure it's really good and worthy of framing or hanging, etc. And that pressure, that I put on myself, kind of ruins it...you know? So I told myself I will play and then hide away whatever comes...no pressure. Just have fun. So I doodled and it was SO MUCH FUN! When it came time to break out the watercolors I felt a little sad at tearing the wrappers off the little squares of pigments...but each square sits in its own little "pot" of sorts...and each little pot has its specific name printed on the side of it...how fun is that? And there's a tray on the top that pops out for mixing colors...oh...it was pretty heavenly. I have opened that box and stared at those squares countless times...little man was quite taken with them as well...

So we "made art" until almost 10:45! It was wonderful! And I love a drizzly day because it feels so warm and bright inside. 

After I painted every bit of white space on the paper...I broke out the colored pencils...for an experiment. And as I brought out my "prisma color" colored pencils memories came flooding in...I remember having to call home and convince my Dad of the importance of having these pencils, that no other brand would do (the fact that they were a "requirement" for drawing two helped a little...)...I remember going home for the weekend and him giving me his credit card to I could place the order and it was the first time I'd ever used a credit card and I kept leaving off the last four numbers on the card...I thought I would never get those pencils...and here I am...nine years later - still lovin' those same pencils from my freshman year of college. 

And that brought back another memory...of a birthday long, long ago. I don't remember how old I was turning, but I wanted to grow up to be an artist. My parents gave me a set of PRANG crayons in a red carry case. Dad told me they weren't just any crayons...they were the kind of crayons real artists use! Was there ANY truth to that? No clue...but I kept those crayons in that red carry case until the plastic that made the case cracked and fell apart...and I still have those PRANG crayons in a pencil pouch in my office. 

So anyway...it was a fun day. A happy day. We stayed in pajamas all day long. I think I drank twelve cups of hot tea. All we did was play. Ahhh...the sweetness of days like this. I just wish T could've shared in it with us.

Um...that's the little man...using a medicine dropper to drink ketchup...