My Brain Is Going in Too Many Directions

This week has been so busy! Of course, there are a lot of weeks I say that now that I have three kids in school. Which reminds me that I wish the "Now" me could go back and tell the "Then" me that it was true what parents of older children warned me about life being busier once kids start school. Seriously, I thought having the kids in school would free up all this extra time for me to have to myself (and in some ways it has) BUT it also means that the time outside of that is FULL OF STUFF. Appointments, field trips, parent/teacher conferences, not to mention the other stuff I'm involved in - which I try to keep to a minimum, but it seems that this year in particular, things are just getting out of hand AND MY KIDS AREN'T EVEN IN SPORTS YET. I just don't know how other moms do it! Of course, I've been assured that those other moms are saying the exact same thing about all other moms too.

Mostly, I just feel that there are all these things I want to do, that even when I have some free time to do something, I don't even know which thing to do first, and I get overwhelmed and end up doing nothing - just waste time playing a game on facebook or reading an actual book. Or a book on my Kindle, which is a real book, but not an ACTUAL book. All you avid readers out there will know what I mean.

[side note: I love my Kindle. I was afraid it would detract from my enjoyment of holding and reading an actual book, but it hasn't. I still read actual books - now I just have the chance to read MORE books because I can buy the actual books that I really want, and I can ALSO get cheaper e-books to sample new authors or genres. Since I have a hard time allowing books to leave my shelves (even ones I didn't love all that much) this has also helped the space issues we have in our house. I mean, a person can only physically store so many books in her home before her children start asking for their closet space back...]

All this to say - I wish I had more time to devote to my many interests and passions. One of which is photography and photo-enhancement/alteration. I play around and I love it, but I lose all confidence when I see the spectacular work that is out there. Trolling etsy, looking at photography, I alternate between "wow, that person is SO talented, I'd be wasting my time listing my stuff" and "wow, my stuff is definitely better than that, I should list it!" Which sounds extremely rude and pretentious now that I've typed it out, ha.

So, before I bore you to death, here is my Red Dahlia.

Artistic Ability Runs in the Family

My husband is an amazing artist. It is the first thing that drew me to him, in fact, as he wasn't my usual type. My mom was trying to set me up with his best friend, in fact.

I'm a very creative person, but unfortunately my artistic talents lag behind my creativity. Thankfully between the two of us, we passed on both creativity and talent to our children. Well, 2 1/2 year-old Miriam is still an unknown, but our boys both spend hours (hours!) each day drawing. I go through a 750-sheet pack of copy paper a month, no joke. (Yay for Target and their cheap paper!)

Thaddeus just turned five early this month. He has outstripped his older brother in love of drawing, I think, and easily churns out two to three times the artwork. His favorite thing to do is draw scenes from cartoons that he watches. He'll copy out scenes off DVD cases and inserts, or just from memory.

Here is one he drew of Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner.

 Although I prefer the creativity of his made-up pieces, like this one of a train driving off a broken bridge into the water with an alligator jumping up to scare it, while two floating rubber duckies look on. Is it just me, or is that the most awesome alligator you've ever seen?

I'll have to dig out some of my favorites from Isaac too! One of these days, I might even get around to showing you some of Aaron's awesome artwork. After all, my house is completely decorated with it. :)