spring cleaning...

Last week I finally removed the last of my boxes from Molly's room and set all of her toys up where she could use the room as a place to play and hang out versus a place used strictly to sleep. When she came home from school on Thursday she noticed something different, walked into her room, did a 360 and declared, "Mom! My room is beautiful!" Then she walked over to her closet and noted her chest of drawers had been relocated (from our bedroom). "I can get dressed in my room now?!"

The contents of the boxes I removed from Molly's room haven't seen daylight in a really long time. For instance: a box full of art supplies from drawing classes I took in college circa 1996. It just happens to be the first one I've gone through today. The kids are mesmerized by these supplies. Mesmerized. As in Logan is BEGGING me to use the charcoal and graphite sticks. Molly wants to paint with the gouache and use the bulldog clips. Caleb thinks the woodless pencils are fantastically cool: "where is the wood that holds the lead?"

My kids love art supplies (just like their mother loves art supplies) and they have box upon box upon containers full of their own: crayons, paints, brushes, colored pencils, paper, scissors, glue, clay, etc. All of it is right at their fingertips and they all use the supplies every single day. But here's the deal--the supplies are just there. Like the toilet paper and the television, I guess. It was refreshing to see their interest in these new-to-them things. The questions, the need to use them, to figure them out, gave me a spark of inspiration and recollection. When we were little, my mother gave us art lessons. I LOVED it (though I do have vague *ahem* memories of being a complete turd at some of these lessons...sorry Mom). I think the kids and I will attempt something similar, making sure to bust out the "cool" supplies.

I'm working on a list of projects and things for us to do this summer and this is going on the top of the list! Yes.