Puzzles and Paintings

Today we started a new 500-piece puzzle, this one based on "The Princess and The Frog."  This Christmas and the last one, we've gotten several of these, all images by Thomas Kinkade.  We chose "The Princess and the Frog" because of Mardi Gras recently, and in fact have watched the movie again to sort of get in the theme of things.  I think it all started at the hockey game last weekend, when we sat and listened to a Dixieland Jazz band playing all sorts of Mardi Gras themed musics.  Obviously, there was "When the Saints Go Marching On," but there were a great deal of other tunes too.  We were in the club section, so we sat on the balcony and looked down upon them as they played song after song.  So Mommy did something special for Fat Tuesday with some cooking, and we watched the movie too - and now this puzzle.  See what I was saying about themes?

Madison loves to do puzzles with Mommy and Daddy.  We sit together, and it's been a new thing lately to just spend an hour or so plugging in the pieces that we can find.  These larger-sized puzzles are more challenging, but with three of us working different sections, things become easier to manage.  The goal is to take these and glue them together, and maybe even frame one or two.  Of course, the artwork is nice - but it's also something we all worked on together, so that holds special meaning as well.

Some day we might have an actual print of one of these, but the idea of painting our own stuff to hang up is appealing.  Madison has been making another painting at school in art class, by the way.  Upcoming, we have her annual art gallery picture, where the school rakes in a whole lot of money by framing kids' pictures and selling them for $20 or something like that.  Yes, we're going to buy it, and you know something?  We're alright with that.  We've got her previous three still hanging up in the house, and this one will go up in her room somewhere.  It's a self-portrait, we're told, so we'll see how it turned out in a bit.

Madison does love to draw.  Her "Hooked on a Feeling" booklet was recently turned in, completed of course.  But also full of doodles.  In the classroom afterwards, she draws the characters, or draws whatever is on her mind at the time - she draws all the time.  Between that and origami, she's in a state of perpetual creation, always making up something new.

The other thing she is always doing is reading.  We read at night, of course.  But during the day, Madison reads quite a bit.  Her favorite series currently is "Diary of a Wimpy Kid," which is something she has about four books for.  She wants Daddy to read the next one in the series after we're finished with the current Mary Poppins story.  They're easy books to read, and they're pretty funny for grown-ups too, actually.  But we like to throw in some classic stuff too.  So yeah, we'll go to "Wimpy Kid" next, but after that we might go to a Jules Verne story.  The other option is that John Grisham series for younger readers - Theodore Boone - maybe Daddy will get Madison hooked on reading legal dramas!