Our budding artists

I don't blog whole lot about my kids' artwork. If I did, there'd be several new posts every day and I'd be spending a lot of time at the scanner. Both my kids are absolute fanatics about drawing, painting and stamping. The true measure of that is that they often get up a full hour and a half before Daddy and I do, but they spend their time out in the kitchen with their giant box of crayons, happy as a couple of ducks in the rain.

A couple of months ago, both kids entered a coloring contest at Trader Joe's. I don't think I remembered to mention it in my blog, but Mam won a prize in her age category. I sorta suspect it it was a random drawing for winners, but I didn't ask. She was thrilled, Smunch seemed to understand that she won and he didn't. He didn't seem jealous. He wasn't angry. We spent Mam's $5 gift card in about 10 seconds. We never saw her drawing again, or you would've seen a photo of it by now.

So, it was particularly exciting when we had a message on the answering machine the other day saying that Smuch won an award in the Hobee's "draw Santa" contest. He'd been asking me about it ever since he submitted his picture. "Do you think they've picked the winner at Hobee's yet?" He was convinced he'd win. In fact, his first reaction to hearing the message was, "I knew it!" I remember having that kind of optimism. It's awesome to see it in him.


We went to Hobee's for breakfast this morning since it made a good opportunity to pick up Smunch's prize (a free breakfast...which he decided to use another time). Hobee's had his drawing posted on the wall with all the other winners. He came third in his age category, but it was great to point out to him that both the first and second place pictures were drawn by eight year olds. He was so proud...and it doesn't matter if it looks like maybe Santa could've used a few more cookies this year...we were pretty proud of him too!