Alexander the artist

We got the kids a huge box of sidewalk chalk for Christmas but all we have left is a box full of nubs. My children love drawing outside with sidewalk chalk and since we're a little homebound right now I thought I should probably replenish our stash of chalk. Unfortunately, going to the store for frivolous purchases isn't exactly wise these days and Amazon has limited their shipping to items deemed essential so it's hard to find decently priced chalk online either. We'll have to eventually add it onto a grocery store purchase when we brave the store again. 

In the meantime, our world has become a billowing cloud of pollen and everything is dusted with a layer of neon green-yellow powder (and making life miserable for those of us who suffer from seasonal allergies: Andrew). I joked that we could just collect all the pollen, mix it with some water, pour it into moulds and start turning out our own sidewalk chalk. Andrew shot down that idea because it would be lethal for him to draw with.

The kids had quite the time drawing with chalk while Andrew and I cleared out the gutters on Saturday (big sisters were inside making peanut butter cookies for everyone). They made an entire ocean, a city with a skyscraper that reaches into outer space, and a rocket ship way up by the sun.

While the little three were working on their mural-sized artwork (and while the cookies were baking), Rachel and Miriam turned their attention to this miniature work of art. It's no bigger than a half-sheet of paper and is filled with all sorts of details (sorry the corners are blurry; they were curling up a bit and my camera didn't quite know what to do with them):

There are birds and bunnies and other forest creatures hiding in the woods (some of the forest animals are visibly...tooting...a detail Rachel was rather proud of) and then the world continues beneath the forest floor in a mine filled with gnomes.

It's hard to find a time when someone is not drawing at our house. Last night Andrew, Rachel, Miriam, and I played Settlers of Catan while Benjamin worked on some Lego creations and Zoë and Alexander coloured. After Andrew smashed us all, we had scriptures and prayer around the table (with the littlest ones still colouring) and when we finished with everything, we announced that it was time to go to bed.

Zoë quickly abandoned her artwork and hopped upstairs to brush her teeth so she could be ready for story time. Alexander couldn't tear himself away from his work:



I did eventually make him put her markers away and hauled him off to bed and he cried and cried and cried and only stopped when I promised to tape his pictures to his wall right then and there. So we did that and then he stopped crying but he still took the better part of the evening to calm down and fall asleep (seriously—he and Zoë were both up until nearly 11:00 last night!). When he woke up this morning he said, "I don't need to go potty. I don't need breakfast. I'm going to go colour!"

And that's what he did! He went downstairs and got some more paper out and started working on a new drawing.