Starting the Celebrating

This has been a busy week...with more to come! With my daughter in Europe, my son-in-law at work and my oldest grand son at Camp Kiwanis for the week, the little kids and I were left to our own devices. After so many years of being around children, I know it is always a good idea to have a "back-up" plan. As they say, "idle hands..."

And so, I let you in on some of my ideas in my last post. The kids
 arrived bright and early on Monday morning and I filled them in on some of my ideas and they were good with all of them but, first we had to head out to pick up some supplies:

Always something good for a laugh at HL. The kids thought this Elvis gnome was hysterical...gotta admit that I kind of laughed as well!

 

We have had a fair amount of this this week:

But we were armed and ready to go. We decided to start with the paintings. I made one to get the feel and give them some tips and then they were off and running. Each of these kids won their art teacher's year end art award for their perspective grades, so there really isn't a lot of direction needed. They both have their own ideas of where things are going and it is fun to watch.

 

And here are the final products. They are so proud of themselves and a rainy afternoon was well spent. Of course, there was still time for a looonnngggg game of Monopoly. Did I remember to say LONG!!? Can you tell it's not my favorite. Tomorrow I will be pushing to get back to Yahtzee, Rummikub, Racko, Bingo....anything but Monopoly. I'm a good sport but we've now played this two days in a row. Since I have managed to avoid playing it less than that in the last 20 years, I think I've done my part. Lol

 

Here's the flag I did to give them an idea of where they could go with this. I didn't want them to think they had to just paint a traditional flag. I should have known better They're both pretty good at doing their own thing.

I've got to go as they will be here any minute for today's adventures but I'll be back. As you can tell, I'm squeezing in as much 4th of July as I can because I think this gang will once again be out of state when the real day rolls around. Stay tuned.