Painting Statues

I told little Melissa (who is five today!) that I would take her to paint a statue a few months ago. Melissa loves arts and crafts and kept begging me to keep my promise. So this month I took her to Paint Away. We went while the big girls were in school and of course Nathan came along. Had I been thinking I definately would have left Nathan with Grandma. But hindsight is 20/20. Melissa spent 10 minutes looking at all her painting options. Nathan took this opportunity to pick up over 20 breakable items (Yikes!). Finally Melissa settled on a mermaid sitting on a rock. We picked out paint colors and got to work. But of course Nathan was not at all happy watching and wanted to paint too. I handed him a small truck to paint and it kept him busy for all of 2 minutes. Here he is during that two minutes. Notice how low the shelves are with pottery. Just the perfect height for a toddler to grab things. Melissa with her mermaid.

Nathan with his blue truck. After painting it for those happy 2 minutes Nathan got down from him chair and grabbed a train and put it up on the table saying "now let's paint the train". These statues are expensive so there would definately be no painting a second one. He was quite upset by that idea and I had to strap him into his stroller for the rest of the painting experience. Then I painted the rest of his truck while he ate a snack in his stroller and struggled to get out.

A week later I returned to the painting place to pick up the fired pieces. Here is Nathan with his truck while eating chicken nuggets for lunch.

And Melissa with her beautiful mermaid.

I did alot of the painting on both of the stautes because the kids got tired out. I would recommend waiting until kids are 6 year old to do this type of painting project.

Melissa is so excited that today is her 5th birthday. We opened a few presents this morning before dad went to work and will open more after dinner with Grandma and Grandpa. Her birthday party with friends will happen tomorrow.

Today I am thankful that:

*We had several sunny days last week because today is very gray and rainy.

*I got 5 movies from the library so my kids could watch one together each day of spring break.

*We got a new computer printer that actually prints when you click print.