El Paso on September 22

This is kind of a silly picture of Emma, but let me explain ... 

Today was my last full day with the children in El Paso, and it was Saturday; so I saved a little fun project for today and when I presented it to the kids, I got various responses. It wasn't that it was such a big deal or anything--we were just going to use fabric markers to decorate plain white T-shirts and see how fancy we could make them. The picture I took of Emma is of her trying to think just WHAT she was going to put on her T-shirt.

And these two mopey looking pictures of Christopher are because he had decided what he wanted to put on his T-shirt, but I asked him to try to think of something else. He had wanted to put some kind of battle that sounded kind of ... violent and sad ... so he was a little bit upset with me for telling him to think of something else.

We finally googled "Star Wars drawings" and Christopher found quite a few characters from those movies that he decided to draw and he totally changed his sad face into a happy one and got right to work on his project.

And Matthew knew right away what he wanted to draw. He had seen some cats in my drawing books that he was going to turn into Star Wars Cats--I wasn't sure exactly what he meant by that, but he said, "Don't worry, I will show you Grandma." 

I did have the kids do a test drawing on plain paper just because it's difficult to make corrections on fabric and I wanted them to be sure they were happy with their design. 

After much thought, Emma decided that since she would like to be a veterinarian when she grows up, she should put lots of animals on her shirt. 

Matthew finished his test drawings first, so he was the first one to begin on his T-shirt. He did a really nice job. 

We spent about two hours on this art project this morning. I had a nice children's praise album playing on I-Tunes and the kids and I sang and danced and sketched the morning away! It was so much fun. 

Can you see Chris's drawing of Yoda? 

This is the back of Matthew's shirt. I asked him what he wanted me to write and he said that since he turned one of his cats into Darth Vader, that's what he wanted me to write. Matthew drew R2/D2 without looking at any pictures at all! 

In between drawing and singing, we visited with Kaity-girl. She was in her little soft chair not far from us. She likes to be included, not left out of all of the fun. 

Matthew was so pleased with his shirt! We let it dry for awhile and then he wore his for the rest of the day. 

 Emma took a little break from her T-shirt (because she made a mistake and couldn't figure out HOW she was going to fix it) and she was working on a bracelet kit I had bought for her birthday.

Emma was also reading the tiny book I bought for Kaity as well as trying to take a picture of Kaity at the same time ... see her camera? Emma does a really nice job taking pictures. 

 This is the front and back of Christopher's shirt. We spent a lot of time on the internet looking these characters up for him and then he copied drawings that he liked. But he did an excellent job with every character if you consider the fact that he is sketching using permanent marker and couldn't erase any lines!

 Christopher got to help his mama out and feed Kaity a bottle this afternoon. Diana is still nursing the baby, but she also gets bottles in-between her other feedings.

Emma was really happy with how her T-shirt turned out. She worked really hard on it and had so much fun with it. 

We had another movie night tonight. We saw "Fly Away Home," which was based on a true story. The children really really enjoyed the story. We finished reading all of the books we had intended to read and had a nice storytime together tonight as well. 

So ... tomorrow after church, I fly back to Michigan. I have many happy memories of my visit here and am so thankful I got to come.