It certainly was a challenge to fit it all in around young kids! In the Art world circles, it was very rare to see any other couple with kids – Now I know why.
Kid’s along in an artist’s life grow up a little different. Since I 'worked at home' (which for me also included painting outside sometimes), I didn’t send them to day care – but they knew “Mom was working”. So they would often need to entertain themselves – which was often entertaining for me!
Here they are after they dressed themselves to ‘go wormin’ in the yard. Who knows what that meant?! My daughter (the oldest) has always liked the 'creepy crawly' things...and could talk her younger brother into just about anything! They seemed to have fun, whatever it was they were after.
Recently Anola (my daughter) told me of a time when she was probably 4 or so and caught a toad. She was coming in to show me, since she had never seen a “frog” like that before.
We had a pond further away on our property and she often watched the frogs swimming out there. Well, I was on the phone with a business client, so I gave her the hand signals for "not now, I'm busy with work"…….. she knew the signal well and she went back out to our front yard to wait.
Seeing the kiddie pool, she thought she’d let "the frog" go for a swim while she waited.
Well, now she knows – toads don’t swim.
Here I am painting by a lake we hiked into near the North East Entrance to Yellowstone.
And here the kids are hiding from the bugs while they wait for me to finish.
Here I’m painting while they’re entertaining themselves on a rock in the field...
Mud was the entertainment of the day here...
In the winter, ice was entertaining...
Building driftwood forts in the summer...
Playing 'caterpillars' on a very cold morning on Yellowstone Lake...
And Halloween – always fun for artist families...
An eagle with her baby chick just coming out of his egg.
Mona Lisa and her paint brush.
Gray, my youngest, wanted me to be sure to mention that he always gets the short end of the stick (or paint brush in this case) as the second child.
It's been a wild ride mixing my art, work and kids - but it certainly makes for some good photos ;)