Family Paint Night

Grandma Sally's new house is chugging along, so she will be making frequent visits to New London to check on progress and make appointments for flooring, siding, kitchen design, etc.  She made a quick visit last weekend, joining us for pizza and movie night (Indiana Jones, which was definitely too much for Haley but which Aiden enjoyed with every fiber of his being) and also a nice sunny walk with the dogs at Low Plain.

Aiden and Haley are back at UVAC for their annual fall swim lessons now, which will go through the holidays... after which we will probably be spending our Saturdays on the slopes, especially if the Farmer's Almanac predictions for a snow-filled winter are accurate.  We shall see.

Aiden just finished watching the first season of Master Chef Jr. - he's been inspired to learn how to cook since then and has been a big help with dinners (Haley too!).  Here he is making tacos.

On Saturday night we tried something new as a family- paint night at Muse PaintBar in Manchester.  I had been there about a  month ago with friends for my 40th birthday, and ever since Aiden has been bugging me about going for a family night, where they do a kid-friendly painting.  The one we did was of an owl, and in the end we had three different owls and a lovely picasso-inspired abstract piece.  Aiden did a great job following along with the instructor, while I did the same but modified the owl (on Haley's request) to have pink and purple plumage instead of yellow and orange.  Andy went his own way and painted a beautiful screech owl in a winter tree (who knew he had hidden painting talents?).  Haley was fabulous.  I was worried that 2.5 hours of straight painting would be too much for her, but she worked at her canvas diligently, asking for different colors and help with mixing to get the different shades she wanted.  After the paint night, we walked a couple of blocks to a wonderful Indian restaurant and filled up on garlic naan, papadums, samosas, curries, and mushroom mutter.

Finished products!

Andy's screech owl