Too Nice to Go Inside

What a wonderful day we had today.  The weather was so perfect that we couldn't bare to go inside.  We spent the entire day outside in the backyard enjoying ourselves.  We drew with sidewalk chalk, played tag, had a picnic lunch, danced to the neighbor's music which they had turned up sooo loud the whole neighborhood could hear it, and then the kids discovered a bee's nest underground.  I had no idea that bees do that, but I googled it and found that bumblebees sometimes take over holes left by other animals.  Bees were flying in and out of the hole all afternoon and the kids were riveted/terrified.

  They would all crouch by the hole and wait to a bee to emerge and then run screaming as soon as it did, only to come right back to wait for another.  Again and again and again.

 The bees were amazingly tame and never came after them.  Except for one who must have smelled the strawberries on Benjamin's breath because it flew right into his face and circled his head over and over again until I sprayed it with the hose (and Benjamin, ha!)  Benjamin didn't mind the shower, though, if it meant avoiding having a bee fly up his nose.  The incident didn't deter him, however, and all three were right back watching the bees moments later.

 I grew tired of the bees before the kids did and decided it would be fun to paint outside. I set up the stuff while they finished with the bees. By that time Christian had woken up from his nap and I have found it very hard to paint with all the kids together lately because he wants to be doing everything just as the others do and always makes a huge mess.  Benjamin and Bella were closer in age and so I kept the projects more age appropriate and we were okay.  But now I'm doing more advanced things with the older ones and he will not settle for a simpler one.  He must do what they do at all costs - and the cost is always spilled sloppy disaster.  Painting outside was the perfect solution because he could make all the mess he wanted and I didn't have to stress.

 It was a lot of fun.  I loved everyone's creativity.  We did one free form painting in which they could do anything they wanted and one structured painting - a tape resist painting - put the tape in a design, paint over and around it, peel the tape away and you have a lovely white picture amongst the color.  Bella spent the most time painting and was most excited about it from the get go.  She painted in a princess book that she got for her birthday for a long time first and then began her tape resist painting.  It was fun to see her mixing colors and imagining what she was drawing.  She was very proud of the result.  Such a cutie.

Benjamin took this picture of Bella and her buddy Shade, who spends every Monday with us.  I just found it as I was downloading the other pics.  Shade gets along so well with my kids. It's really fun to have him.