The Painting

When we went on vacation a week or so ago we stopped in to a children's museum.  The kid's and I got stuck in the first room we got to.  There was a big water table where you could spray water to make things move and you could float rubber duckies and colorful plastic boats down a stream.  After a half-hour or so spouse-with-grand-vision firmly encouraged us to move beyond our satisfaction.  And we found out that the museum only got better from there.  There were dinosaur bones to dig and musical instruments to play and science experiments to do and art to create.

It was the art to create that got spouse-with-the-thinker to get thinking.  There were canvas paintings hung all over the walls of that particular exhibit and I think he liked the look of it.  He told me as we left, "I think we need to do a family painting."

We have a slight history with painting, ol' spouse-with-surprising-artistic-passion and I.  As in most things, the story starts with my own cheapness.  The paintings that I had gotten for our living room looked like afterthoughts on the substantial wall behind the couch.  Spouse said we needed something "more this size," and he stretched his long arms from one end of the couch to the other.  We knew we wanted a painting of a tree, it's kind of a family theme to remind us that we all want to make it to the tree from Lehi's vision.  But four foot by seven foot paintings of trees go for a steep price.  I thought, "I'd much rather hoard my gold underneath the floorboards, thank you."

But then I came up with a plan. 

"You could paint a tree," I told Van-Spouse-Gogh.  Cheapness loves to save on labor costs.  I looked up trees on the internet and came up with the idea of what the tree should look like so he could paint it.  And then he thought that we should paint the tree together.

There's a test for a marriage, eh?

But we did it, although I'm not going to say that one of us who will remain nameless and also short didn't do a little bit of pouting when they felt their vision was hampered.

And it really was a good enough experience that we are now ready to do a family painting - and to do a family painting every year for the next forever.  It is kind of exciting to think of our future houses being covered in canvas's expressing the personality and evolution of our family.  Yeah, I'm totally geeked out about it (but not as geeked out as spouse-a-fire I'll tell you what).

Here's where the painting is so far.  I'll show you the finished product in a couple of days.  I'm kinda excited about it all.