Today's Art Room Report...

Day 20

This is my nephew Kyler, one of the coolest kids you will ever meet.  

Not that I am his cool aunt or anything! 

Is it wrong that I am already missing the beach and it is only our second week of school? That feeling does not usually take over my whole existence until at least April! 

I look good as a mermaid.

Yes we had to leave the island to get Starbucks but sometimes you just have to make the sacrifice. That is me on the right with my friend Shannon.

Boat trip on Clearwater Bay when we went to see Winter and Hope from the movie "Dolphin's Tale"

My quiet sign in my class it the Mona Lisa. I count down 3, 2, 1, Mona Lisa then everyone has to freeze and look like the Mona Lisa. It works very well especially with Kinder and 1st. They are all fascinated with her and always want to know more about her. I even had a student make a PowerPoint about the Mona Lisa-- without even being asked to.  

So you will understand my surprise when today I called for a Mona Lisa and as every other 1st grader in the room was sitting quietly with their giant Mona Lisa smiles one new student screamed out at the top of her lungs  "I hate the Mona Lisa, she is so ugly". 

 Really not sure what to say to that...? Maybe beauty is in the eye of the beholder, or maybe the lack of eyebrows was the fashion back then. Or maybe I could talk to her about the controversy over the fact that the Mona Lisa was thought to be the female persona of di Vinci himself? 

Of course I said non of those remarkably intelligent things... instead I just kind of stared at her and after a few freaked out seconds I calmly said "please refrain for yelling in the art room". 

We had our school flag at 1/2 mass today in honor of those who lost their lives on 9/11. It is strange how something that did not effect me on a personal level has in-fact impacted me so deeply on a personal level. 

I mean I did not know anyone personally who was killed that day. 

I was a restaurant manage for Chili's at the time. My store was at the end of the runways at Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Texas. I was at work on that day. We were setting the kitchen  up for the lunch rush, waiters were arriving at the time. I received a call from one of the waiters who asked if he needed to come to work that day? Huh? Why would you not come to work? He told me to go turn the TV on.....I did just in time to see the second plane hit the second tower. Soon after that the 100's of planes that land every day right in the front of the Chili's building, one right ofter the other stopped landing. 

I will never, as long as I live forget that view. Something we had grown so use to as planes landing was so strange to see stopped.  The sky was motionless.  The silence was almost deafening. Later it was learned that a Chili's waitress from another store in another state had been on the flight that crashed in Pennsylvania.  She had been on her was home from visiting her parents. Of course I did not know her personally but I did and still do feel a deep since of loss of a fellow Chilihead. 

To all those who lost their lives and to their families and friends- 

We will always remember you!

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