Watercolors

Yesterday was Mother's Day.  Scott and I had spend Friday evening and all day Saturday at a marriage seminar in Pella (we found out we have the exact same ISTJ personality), so we didn't have a lot of time to plan anything exciting and were too tired to do anything exciting.  We decided to go out for lunch after church, and had a nice meal at Smokey Row with some friends.  Laurel fell asleep on my lap in the restaurant, and got a 20 minute nap there.  

We then went home, and that's when the excitement began.  Laurel woke up, and Nicolas decided not to nap.  They were both very, very crabby all afternoon.  So much crying and whining.  Then we had a tornado warning blow through, and had to sit in the basement for a while.  Fortunately, the hail and torrential rain passed to the south of us, so we did not have any damage.  In fact, after about an hour the sun came out and we were able to eat supper (homemade chicken noodle soup) on the back deck.  That was nice, except the crying children.  We hoped Laurel would fall asleep early, but she didn't go to sleep until after 9pm.  Nicolas did finally fall asleep around 9pm, but ended up waking up at midnight and 2am and 6:30am to eat (more often than usual).  And Laurel woke up yelling "no no no no no!" at 10:30pm, kept crying, and ended up coming into our bed and sleeping there for the rest of the night.  Not the relaxing, "all about me" Mother's Day I was hoping for, but hey, that's really what being a Mom is all about, sacrificing for your family.

Today Scott left for work (and will probably be home late tonight), and the kids and I got up before 7am, which in my book is early!  And it was dark and raining all morning. I allowed Laurel to watch her 2 episodes of Dora already at 8:30am!  I could not bring myself to even work out.  I decided to break out the watercolors I had bought a couple weeks ago, along with a cheap shower curtain to protect the table. 

I showed Laurel how to dip her brush in the water, then in the paint, and then to put it on the paper

I think Laurel had more fun dipping the brush back and forth from the paints to the water, usually skipping the paper!  She did paint about 6 beautiful paintings, though.

Here is Laurel, inspecting one of her paintings!  Pretty good for a 2 year old!  HA!  That is actually one that I did.  I am not a very good artist, but I can do a passable piece of art using water colors.  This one is recognizable, at least, because when I handed it to Laurel she said, "Sunset!  Good night, sun!"