Spring Break

For the past several years we have been invited to join my daughter and her family for "Spring Break." We fly to Florida to enjoy the warm sunshine and beach. The four girls are so full of energy and laughter - it is really a delightful week together.

I always take a sketchbook and some of my watercolors with me. I will sit and sketch while others are playing lacrosse, running on the beach, or balancing on the stand up paddleboard. There was a time when all the girls wanted to paint a picture and my sketchbook holds some wonderful paintings of other trips.

This year, just the 'littles' (what my daughter calls the two youngest ones) wanted to paint in my book. They take this very seriously and I always promise to post what they have done.

This is Winnie's work:

 We were sitting outside on the deck and she was drawing everything she saw. The table and chairs where we eat all our meals. (There were 8 chairs there, but we thought drawing 2 was enough), the flag on the deck railing, and a pot of flowers. She thought it would be fun to put a pair of sunglasses in the flowers - you can see them peeking through.  And then, of course, she signed her work  - as every great artist does when they are finished. I love it!

This is Hildry's creation:

I do not know where this idea came from. . ., but she painted a barn! Off to the right you can see the pig pen (lots of mud) with a fence around it and a tractor just behind it. "Tractors are always green," she told me. (Her uncle is a farmer, so she would know this.) She put flower boxes in the windows and the big X on the barn door. Then she started painting the sky and put in big thunderbolts and words like 'aabam,' 'caboosh wosh,' and 'crash boom!'

Both girls had a great time . . .and I love it that I can show them off!