Lazy Saturday Mornings and Active Imaginations

I'm late getting at my blog today, but there are several good reasons for this. For one, I treated myself to a Saturday morning sleep-in, which was glorious. Then when I finally got up and went downstairs to make my pot of always highly anticipated morning coffee--horror of horrors--I realized I was out of half-and-half! We have skim milk in the fridge, but I'd almost rather not drink coffee at all than drink it with skim milk in it. Anything less than 2% makes coffee taste downright yucky, in my opinion. So I was forced to start my day with a quick trip to the grocery store.

When I got back, I burrowed into my favorite overstuffed chair and enjoyed my first heavenly-tasting cup of coffee in front of the T.V., and before I knew it, I found myself becoming engrossed by a TLC home improvement show called "Moving Up." (It's the one where people move into a new house and fix it up, then the previous owners come back and see what they've done to it--and they usually aren't happy about the changes the newcomers have made.) Anyway, I was in a real vegging-out mood, and I was thinking that I had nothing of interest to blog about today; so I thought I'd just take a day off.

But then I realized that there is one subject of which I will never grow tired: bragging about my sweet, intelligent, talented boys! And so I thought I'd share a piece of artwork with you, a masterpiece in ink and colored pencil which was created recently by son #4 as a Secret Santa gift for a co-worker. There are some components of the drawing which have meaning around the office that I don't get at all. But even without knowledge of the insider jokes that are embedded in the drawing, I think this is a completely amazing piece of artwork.This son of mine is a brilliant cartoonist, and he has a unique talent for drawing dinosaurs and mythical animals in intricate detail--and these images spring out of his very imaginative head most of the time (which I find impressive, because I always need something to copy). In fact, I have a collection of pencil drawings that this boy did many years ago, which depict these crazy creatures he dreamed up; these drawings are...well, they're impossible to describe. You'd have to see them, I guess. I may have to devote a week of blog posts to them one day soon.

On lazy Saturday mornings like this, kids all over this country are firing up their Wii's, Gameboys, iPads, and whatnot; they're watching cartoons or DVD's; they're texting their buddies. Wouldn't it be great if every now and then they'd shut off the electronic gadgets, sit down at the table with a piece of paper and a pencil, and just let their imaginations run wild?