For the last several months, my dining room has looked like this:

And:

And:

It started sometime after Easter.  The Easter Bunny brought this:

And this book, this wonderful book, inspired Raines to paint nothing but flowers.  Over & over & over again.  

The book is about a girl and her Grandfather who paint a garden.  R was fascinated seeing how the painting came together step-by-step.

He became obsessed with painting flowers.  Of all different types. He practiced painting the flowers in the book, he checked out flower books from the library, we looked up pictures of flowers on the internet, he picked flowers outside….

For several weeks, Mike would come home from work to find this:

I mean really.  I was in heaven.

And then?  Just like that?  It was over.  He was done with flowers.  D-O-N-E.  And promptly returned to drawing missiles.

But it was nice while it lasted.  The paintings have been brightening my dining room for over four(!!) months now.  I’m having trouble taking them down.  But with kindergarten starting next week….it’s time for a clean slate.  I know.

I’m not ready to let go.