clay cafe

this is one of our traditional holiday things that we do while at the mall of the great plains in olathe, kansas. we go to clay cafe and paint something. the funny thing about it -- it's amazing how relaxing it is to just sit and paint. you don't have to worry about making a mess, having the right colors, or anything else. you just purchase your piece and then pay a fee ($3) to sit there and paint.


raven loves to paint, so she was right up there at the table w/ summer and lucas. raven had a little mouse on skies ornament to paint this year. summer and lucas both chose old world santas and coordinated their colors so they would look good together.


little riahna was happy sitting here in her stroller. it was rather peaceful there until it got tipped over, but she survived w/o much fuss at all. that's a bad things about these umbrella strollers, as they tip over easy if there is too much weight on the back of them.


scott chose a dragon to paint and opted to sit at his own table where he wasn't fighting for room or to keep the table from shaking or anything. he's going to dry brush it, so i'm sure it'll look real good when it's done.


amazingly, jerry found out last year that he really likes to sit down and paint something. last year i had the impression that he thought this was about ridiculous, but after sitting and watching other people paint . . . he got up and got himself something to paint and this year was looking forward to painting. last year he painted a cross that sits on his dresser and this year he painted a snow man.

jacob and the boys were there w/ us, too, but their pictures are not shown here for obvious reasons. i'll have them posted this next week to my other blog, and that way i won't have to blur their faces out.

in case you're wondering, i didn't paint anything and i never do. i know it sounds weird, but i would rather do something like that when i'm alone instead of together in a group. fortunately, though, that leaves me free to take pictures of everybody else having a great time. besides, if i were trying to paint something, i wouldn't get anything done on it because i would be trying to see what everyone else was doing on their projects!

after rearranging some things at home and seeing how many things i have accumulated to paint, i think we might start having "paint night" at our house every once in a while. everyone enjoys painting so much that we could do some projects and spend some time together while working on them. that might be a great idea for some of these winter nights where it gets dark so early. after all, we (meaning the whole group of adults) can only watch the same cartoon for so many times. it's bad when we go to put on a movie for the kids and the adults are arguing for or against the movie!