Day #16: Fun and games ... all day long!

Today it was COLD at Ft. Bliss ... a definite INSIDE day. So I unloaded my big white art bag that was stuffed full of good things like coloring books, stencils, color by number books, drawing books, markers, colored pencils, crayons of every type and size, stickers ... and we all had such FUN!

I'm always a little bit amazed at little rough 'n tumble, wiggly boys who can immediately settle down if given something interesting and creative to do ... Matthew and Christopher never stopped drawing, coloring, exploring books, and doing art work for more than two solid hours. They were exceedingly happy children! Emma Joy is an art expert (practically) and is totally in her element when given any creative opportunity.

I brought a bunch of my finger puppets along from Michigan for some added entertainment. Emma really likes getting 10 of them all going at once on her fingers ...

Last week when we were in Austin at Sabrina's, we had visited a teacher's store and I picked up some plain white book marks that came 35 to a pack for about $1.99. So the children and I decorated book marks today. We're going to do more tomorrow. Emma got hers finished for me to use, and I got mine finished for her ... but we're going to make a whole bunch of other ones in the next few days. I'm using Emma's tonight to mark my place in the book I am reading here at the hotel.

We also played some games like Memory (matching cards), Connect-4, and checkers. Emma and I played regular checkers, giveaway, as well as the Fox and Geese game. And then Emma wondered if Grandpa Jones and I would play a regular game of checkers. I told her Grandpa always, always, always WINS when he plays checkers with me. Emma wanted a picture of his look of victory after he completely wiped me out! The boys and I played several games of Memory (they have really good memories) and Connect-4 too.

And even though it was cold today (in the low 50's with a very brisk wind), the kiddos wanted to show me the bubble wands that Diana had gotten for them. So we went outside and the kiddos let the wind blow their bubbles around ...
... and they did a little tree climbing as well ...

We shared some simple meals together today, popped popcorn, ate icecream and just hung out together. We also read some really good books together. All and all, a very nice day!

There is a new lion exhibit at the El Paso zoo that has opened up this week. We think we will visit it Wednesday afternoon. It's supposed to be warm and sunny by Wednesday, so that's why we've picked that day for the zoo. I'm not sure what we've got planned for tomorrow, but I'll try to show you whatever we do!