12.20.06 Art Box

It’s the rush before the rush known as Christmas. 

I’m taking the day off.  After breakfast we finished up the last of our Christmas presents - home made stuff I can’t talk about here since my family reads this thing from time to time.  After scrubbing glue and paint off three kids, we went to work on the next most important ingredient in a Groves family Christmas: the art box.

We’ll be driving to Tyler, making a one night stop in Texarkana on the way.  After a few days in East Texas we’ll head down to Houston. All this travel really isn’t so bad - if the kids have the art box.

Gabriella, the most artistic and - oddly - organized of our kids so far, lead the assembly process today.  Every marker was put in bowls by like color family: reds, blues, greens and so on.  Then each bowl was emptied into it’s own zip lock bag.  The same was done with colored pencils, paper, erasers, crayons etc.  Then she allowed each kid to pick out one coloring book and one glitter pen - her most prized possessions - to take along on the trip.

She stacked every zip lock bag and paper clipped bunch of papers and all the coloring books in a very specific way - the order, from top to bottom, she plans for them to used.  She will oversee the art box.  And no one will stop her.  All art supplies must be requested from her.  These are the art box rules.  The other two artists in the van do not question these rules, they do not argue when she informs them that “No, you cannot have a stamp because ‘stamp’ comes after ‘construction paper’ and we haven’t used construction paper yet.  Cuh-cuh-construction paper.  Hear the C?  You’ll have to wait.”

This is why CPAs and artists should not breed together.  We’ve created a monster capable of decorating and organizing the world at the same time.

Yikes.