You can't rush art

My children are FULL of funny one-liners these days. When I took Spencer to the doctor to confirm that he had the H1N1, like his sister, he was NOT. HAPPY. He fussed at me the whole way there - even telling me that if I made him go that he was not going to give me any more kisses. That is a serious threat. But I took my chances and made him go anyway. He was pitiful and shy and traumatized the whole time. But while we were waiting on the snot card to turn flu or not flu, he perked up some. And when we were walking to the car, he was sucking away on his sucker and wearing his Bob the Builder sticker. I said, "See, son, it was not that bad. No one hurt you. There were no shots. I told you it was not going to be bad." And he grinned from ear to ear, cut his eyes at me and with a wave of his hand said, "piece a cake!" I refrained from pinching him and stifled my giggles.

So the other night, we were carving pumpkins. I was happy to have David AND Bay to help us. After last year, when the children whined and said that I was not doing it right, I was happy that the pumpkin carving team was with us once again. We always try to wait until the week of Halloween because we all know how gross and rotten pumpkins can become, right? Of course, it is not as dangerous here where the temps are cooler, but I still like to have pretty punkins as long as possible.

Anyway.

Jessa drew a picture of what she wanted. She also wanted to add make-up. Yep. Make-up. Spencer selected the features he wanted from an array that I had drawn. Of course, once the guts were scooped, they both decided that they wanted to draw their ideas directly onto the pumpkin. This was all OK because I gave them washable markers. I also put the Windex on the table so that they could clean off any boo-boos. Well, this turned into a full-fledged, old-fashioned pumpkin scrubbin'. I am pretty sure that Martha Stewart would have even been proud of the sparkling clean pumpkins we had.

So Bay was working with Spencer, a pumpkin, and a three-year old vision of what he wanted the pumpkin to be. Poor Spencer was not feeling 100%, so he was somewhat impatient when Bay did not capture his vision accurately. But in the end, they were both pleased with how it turned out.

Then there was David and Jessa. She being our dramatic girl was feverishly working on transferring her ideas onto the canvas that was her pumpkin. David was just sitting there after de-gutting, waiting on the princess to complete the outline she was making for him. It was starting to get late, so David finally said something to try and hurry her along and then she looked at him indignantly, sighed, and announced, "You can't rush art." Alrighty then.

Jessa posing with her artistic creation.

I am sure you would agree we should not have tried to rush it.

In the end, her pumpkin was cute, too. And did I mention they were both really clean?

AND since I am NEVER in any pictures, I decided to remedy that.

So, enjoy, well, ME!

*And please notice how overjoyed all of my family members are to be in a picture with me.

It really warms the cockles of you heart.

Ah, treasured memories.

We may need to frame some of these babies.

Feel the love.