Labor (of love) Day

this weekend, i finally uploaded my photos to my computer.

i've been meaning to do this for a while. 

there are a lot of fun pictures to share, including some from my recent "how to use your camera you've had for 9 months lesson" with Sam Al-Khoury.

a huge portion of the photos involved my kids working on some sort of art project or another. 

anth has been on a painting/iron beading/sun-catcher kick. 

which, of course, i love. 

over Labor Day weekend, both of the boys and i had our own little creative adventures . . .

anth loves painting plaster figurines. 

this particular weekend included a monkey and a dolphin. 

this was a nice, easy, project to acquire at Michael's.

benny's?

not so much. 

as of late, the boys have been highly in love with the new version of Thundercats on Cartoon Network.

more specifically, ben loves an episode about the "Sword of Omens."

lately, he can be found brandishing pretty much anything and claiming it has the power of omen. 

or something to that effect. 

here is a visual of the sword for reference: 

note: while searching for the image above, i found a disturbing amount of photos of people who have tattoos of the same sword. 

okay, so i found like 5. 

but still. 

wow. 

i should really watch this show with bern and the boys to figure out what this sword can apparently do.

anyway. 

benny wanted a sword. 

and i was in my pajamas.  

so this is what he got. 

apparently, he was not impressed by mom's low-budget productions. 

(actually, he was upset about something entirely different and, apparently, unmemorable a few weeks later.)

but this next picture leads me to believe i offered him a reward if he stopped crying and took a picture. 

mom. 

of. 

the. 

year. 

my random little project on this day was food. 

one of my colleagues, alice, has recently turned me on to kale chips. 

i was working on these while anth was painting his dolphin. 

at some point, anth asked me to come over and help him with something, and i carried the baking sheet with the kale on it over with me. 

he took one look at it, forgot his question, and asked me what i was doing. 

i explained. 

"never mind, mom. i'm okay. i mean, that looks pretty gross already, so i really don't want to distract you and have that turn out worse. "