In a Pickle

Last Friday we had Family Game Night.  We love family game night.  We go through phases where we faithfully do it every Friday.  Then, we get busy, and Mom & Dad are too tired and cranky to put up with Bookworm's meltdowns when she loses and Popcorn's frequent chair abandonment in the middle of her turn to do cartwheels...

But this Friday we were all in great humors and in peaceful harmony, so we decided to trash the family harmony and play games.  We started out with our standard, Sorry.  We play Sorry every time and every single time certain family members are poor winners and somebody else is a sore loser.  The person playing these roles varies from one time to the next...

Y'know.  Just to keep it all fresh.

This past Friday Popcorn drug out her game In a Pickle.  She got it for Christmas, and for some strange reason we have not played it since last January.

Here's the premise of the game.  Each player has five cards, with nouns listed on them.  There are four cards in the middle of the play area.  You play your cards either directly above or below an item to make it where the items are progressively bigger...

For example, I had an atom, so I put that above the skeleton.  Popcorn put a chicken below the skeleton, and then the next item could be a barn...so an atom is in a skeleton, which is in a chicken that lives in the barn.

Once a card has four cards in it, like the above example, it becomes a "pickle round."  In this round, you can only play larger items on the final object, like a barn could be in France, which is in the Universe...The round goes around the table one time, with the person who played the fourth object (like the barn) getting an extra turn.

Is this making any sense?

Well, the hilarity of the game is how creatively our family can think.  My husband becomes very frustrated.  Popcorn asked what a scandal was and promptly played it below an earthquake...Which Bookworm then said was all in "thoughts."  We laughed uproariously at this...

However Studmuffin was not happy that I said everything could fit in a dictionary...Even a universe, so then the dictionary could fit in a library, which could fit in a parking lot...

See what I mean?  The game is really fun.  The best part is when a player challenges your thought process and you say "well, France could fit in the river, because it's the Mississippi River, and all of that water can totally cover France."  Or when Popcorn threw down the noun "reflection" and stoutly proclaimed that a canyon could absolutely be in a reflection of the water...Or when I declared that a forest was in the headlights of my car.  No, not the entire forest, but certainly the headlights were shining and there was the forest, dead ahead in them!

These statements made the girls and I laugh hysterically while Studmuffin got very frustrated with our crazy thinking.

There is no point to this post.  I just wanted to share our fun with you...

And perhaps give you a good idea for an inexpensive, yet very fun Christmas gift!  Or, perhaps you need a ten dollar birthday gift for your next child's party...

Now you've got one! 

What special things do you do as a family?  What memories are you making with your family?  Do you have a favorite family activity? 

Do you have any great family games that we may not have discovered?  Please share.  We all exchange games as our family gifts, so we could use some new ideas!

Feeling Sentimental

Have you heard that ridiculous country song, ""I Hear Voices."  It's not my favorite, but today I find that I'm hearing voices.  Or rather, I'm being reminded of loved ones.



As you know from Wednesday's blog, I hurt my back at work.  It worries me to have back pain.  I simply do not have time for back pain.  And, having an injured back makes it tough to do my job.  I don't want to get into all of the worries that are floating in the not so back of my consciousness.  It makes my back hurt worse!



I was given Friday off by my supervisor.  We had a light day scheduled, and she asked if I'd like to take the day to try and rest/heal my back.



Guess what?



I'm TERRIBLE at resting.  When I have mountains of things to do, and little time to do it, I am GREAT at resting.  In nursing school I realized that I have two reactions to stress.  One reaction is to organize every detail of my life that I can even remotely control.  The other is sleep.  It is a sleep that can not be avoided.  As in, I would be sitting in a chair trying to desperately understand the renal system, and the next thing I'd know, it would be two hours later and drool would be running down my face.



Thursday I rested.  I attempted to some light housework, but my back spasmed every time I tried to move something, or reached in a certain way.  I ended up finishing a free Nook book that I didn't particularly enjoy, but determined to finish it.  I clipped three weeks worth of coupons, and cleaned out about half the expired ones.



I swear by 7pm I thought the day was never going to end.



So, Friday I sat on my couch and slowly sipped my coffee, and looked out the window at the brilliant sunshine, and decided there was nothing for it.  I simply had to wash my light fixtures and windows.



Because, clearly that is just the remedy for back pain.



Why is this post called "Feeling Sentimental?"  Patience, Dear Reader.  I'm getting there in my rambling too drawn out fashion.



I washed windows.  And I thought of my Grandma Irene.  I could picture her, with her cream colored wash pan and white tea towels helping me scrub the fly specks off of her kitchen window and storm doors.  Grandma Irene has never allowed a speck of dust to make itself at home in her house.  She was and still is a hard worker.



She is also very no nonsense.  She will say the most outrageous things.  And they will be true.  But somehow, you can't help but laugh at the crazy thing she just said.  I think I'm a little like her in that way.  I have a terrible tendency to say what I think, then think twice about what already popped out of my mouth.



As I sat at my dining room table, eating a bowl of leftover chili, my gaze wandered to my new chairs.  It set my mind to remembering Grandmama Dolly.  I really don't think I am much like her at all.  Perhaps we have some similar physical attributes.  She was always tall and thin with long thin fingers and small wrists.  I have never been as thin as her, and never will be, but I have really long arms and legs, and my fingers are long and thin like hers.  Oh, and we both love a cute pair of heels, and I remember her saying that skirts should hit just above or just below the knee to be the most flattering.  I have no idea why she told me that, or why I remember it, but I find it to be true!



While I was thinking of her and missing her, I decided to treat myself to a cup of coffee.  Feeling indulgent, I added some hazelnut creamer to the cup.  Since Grandmama was fresh in my mind, I felt a pang of guilt over the unnecessary calories and fat from that creamer.  I don't know of very many grandmas who tell their grandchildren, "Don't drink so much milk, it will make you fat."  Or, better yet, "Don't eat so much bread, you don't want to get fat."  I was always horrified when she would say such things to me, but now I see how right she was.  Granted, I still drink a giant glass of milk every single morning, but you can bet Grandmama Dolly's bright red Roper boots that it is skim!

As I looked at the not so practical chair in my living room, I realized I may be more like her than I realized.  My mom has told me they never had matching furniture growing up.  Well, considering my house is decorated with odds and ends that I have accumulated and kept for various sentimental reasons, perhaps I take after her more than I think!



Grandma Irene has a very few nick knacks scattered through her house.  They are the same ones I always remember, with the exception of a few things she's received as a gift in the last few years.  Her house is always spotless, and every flower arrangement and little figurine is exactly as it should be, and no dust dare live near it.


Grandmama Dolly had more nick knacks and whatnots than the eye could discover on a distracted scan of the room.  She had 5 kids, 16 grandkids, and I won't even attempt counting greats and great greats.  She had lots of framed photos that we all gave her of our families.  She could always name everyone's birthday.  That always amazed me.  I can barely remember my siblings birthdays!



I bemoan the things I have scattered throughout my house.  I swear, at times I let it get so bad, that one could pretend they were walking through a junk shop as they wander my house!  But so many of them have sentimental value, or they just make me think of my grandparents, so I simply must put them out!



I'm contemplating asking my husband to drag my box of fall decorations down, but that would mean eliminating some of the "things" that make me smile to look at!  However, if I don't put something up, you won't even be able to see the different decorations!



Oh, well, this point is not well thought out, and flows terribly.  I guess I will just show you some random photos of a few trinkets I've laid about.  Apparently so I can have something to dust around.



Wait!  What am I saying?  I don't dust as a general rule.  I do not dust, empty the dishwasher or scoop dog poop.  I have children for those tasks.  Even if they don't dust as well as I'd like.  At least I'm not doing it.

This porcelain doll is the only wrapped Christmas gift I ever remember getting from Grandmama.  One of my girls posed her behind this frame with an old doll dresser and the old red truck.  Affection for old junk seems to keep trickling down the line.

Obviously I didn't get to this window.  But I love these old bottles.  Grandmama Dolly had a thing for bottles.  They were everywhere.  As I sit in my claw footed Grandmama Dolly chair and type this I can count 12 bottles and old mason jars within my eyes range.

I take that gift thing back!  She gave me this bit of pottery she bought on a trip with Granddad!  But I don't think it was for Christmas.  And I do know I received it as an adult.  How cute are those little books?  They are actually little card games!  Fun!  See why I can't pack all of this away to never be gazed at?

This vinegar jar used to be Grandmama's.  I remember her giving it to me when I still lived in South Texas.  I was so happy to get it and afraid I'd break it on my way home.  The other stuff is sheer junk.  A rooster from the Grand Canyon, and popcorn tubs from a dear friend as a parting gift when we moved, and just a random jar to make the scene complete.

This is just a pile of random stuff I carried home from going through Grandmama's stuff that Mom had.  She was an avid bowler, and those little pins make me smile.  I'm a TERRIBLE bowler.  I wear the bracelets and necklace.  I've never been one for accessories, but each time I slip them on, they make me think of my Grandmama, and I smile.

So that's it.  Today I'm sentimental.  What treasures do you have that bring up fond thoughts of your grandparents?

By the way, Grandmama was a country music fanatic.  She would have loved that song.

Dinner Conversation

Last night we had chili for dinner.  It was fabulous.

Side note:  Popcorn has gymnastics on Thursday.  She  eats a snack on the way there, and a snack on the way home, but watch out if dinner is not basically ready when we get home.  She is so hungry that she has total melt down if she has to wait even twenty minutes.  Home made pizza night has now moved to Wednesday night, for obvious reasons.

Back to topic:  The chili was good.  I really really really wanted a third bowl.  "I really want some more chili, but I am trying to resist."

"You are having an inner conflict," Bookworm informed me in all earnestness.

Where does she come up with this stuff?

By the way:  Happy Fall!

Oh, and after trying this trick, I googled it to figure out where the whole egg balancing thing began, and guess what?  You can do this every single day of the year!

Here's a Snopes link for your edification:
http://www.snopes.com/science/equinox.asp

Today is a Good Day For...

It's raining.

Can I get an AMEN?

I am out of funds for the month...Darn this envelope system...So instead of doing rainy day shopping, I will:

1.  Clean house and light fall scented candles in every room.
2.  Drag fall decorations one by one out of the attic.  I hurt my darn back and don't dare carry down the box.
3.  Place my pumpkins all about in my freshly cleaned home.
4.  Make a giant crock pot of chili, enough to perhaps freeze for a busy day...Do any of you ever have chili left overs?  No matter how much I think I make, it all seems to get eaten within a few days.  My girls like to take it in a thermos for lunch.
5.  Bake a double batch of ginger cookies.  That should solidify that fall is in the air smell.  Besides, Aunt Flo is in for a visit and she loves ginger cookies.  She gets cranky when her needs aren't met, so hopefully that will help shut her up.
6.  Do a yoga and pilates workout.  I hurt my darn back a month ago moving a bed by myself at work that was older than Methuselah, and it didn't steer well.  I keep having random flare ups of debilitating left flank muscular pain.  I'm trying to build up my ab muscles and keep my hamstrings limber by doing plenty of core exercises.

Random fact:  I keep calling it my right flank, but it is clearly my left.  This comes from 15 years of flipping my right and left when charting on patients.  You know, their left is my right...Sadly, I have now decided to call my right my left.  It is quite embarrassing when I point at my brace my left flank and say, "The right side of my back is killing me."

But if that's the most embarrassing thing I do today, I will be doing great.

Do you know what Saturday was a great day for?

Kite flying!

I wish I had taken a closer up photo...And as you can see, we got our fence up, and flaked out on finishing out the top rail.

But then, if we had all of our "to dos" done, what would we do?

Well, perhaps we would find SOMETHING to do.

And by the way:  How beautiful is this girl?  For the first time she is truly encountering "mean girl" syndrome.  I am tempted to call certain girls by very bad names.  

But I'm the adult.  So I'm refraining.

For now.

What are your plans for Thursday?

P.S.  My dog is scared of thunder storms. Either that, or she senses Popcorn is.  We brought her in last night, knowing it was going to rain, and when it started lightning nearly nonstop she ran from room to room sniffing each of us, and finally went to sleep next to my 9 year old daughter's bed.  At least that kept Popcorn from climbing in bed with me, which is the normal response to thunder and lightning!

Boys

When my girls and I visited my folks a month or so ago, I reclaimed the "Middle Bedroom."  This bedroom is clearly MY bedroom, although Mom insists on referring to it as the "Middle Bedroom."  This could be due to the fact that Dawn, being the oldest did not have a bedroom as soon as she went to college.  Instead, her few remaining belongings were shifted to my room, and Paula was given what was formerly Dawn's room, but is now referred to as the "South Bedroom."  So, Paula clearly does not have a bedroom as she originally shared a room with Dawn until my folks built on, then Dawn got her own room (now known as the South Bedroom) and Paula and I shared my bedroom.  There was just entirely too much moving about for Paula to claim any particular bedroom as her own.

David's old bedroom isn't even a bedroom anymore.  It is now a sewing room.  There is not a trace of him to be found in there.  Not even the urine smell from when he decided to have his own bathroom.  After all, he had heard that some people had bathrooms for each of their children.  David, not to be deterred by the then logistics of one bathroom for six people built his very own bathroom.  In his closet.  Granted, it was just a large Folgers Coffee can, but since he had the correct anatomy, it worked just fine for him.  Until my mom decided that the urine smell was overpowering in his room and decided to get to the bottom of it.

Oh.  I'm laughing just thinking about how lovely that discovery must have been!

So.  Back to the original story.  I put my girls in the South Bedroom, and I gleefully dumped my belongings in MY bedroom.  Sadly, my mom has had the audacity to give the furniture to my brother.  And my sister Dawn, Queen of Organization, cleaned out the bedroom, so all I have left is one measly pair of Rustler jeans, a few t-shirts, and a nightgown.  Oh, and a pair of shorts that came from who knows where, but they are NOT the ratty old, falling apart acid washed cargo shorts that I placed in their 19 years ago!  In addition to that, I couldn't find my cheerleading camp indecently short wind shorts!

Oh, the humanity!  My family members are obviously lacking in respect for preserving MY bedroom as it was for all time.

*SIGH*

Oh, and that's not all!!  When it came time to ride horses with my darling daughter I couldn't even find my two pairs of socks I had left there for riding horses!  Granted they were a little on the thin side and they were from the 1990s.  But they fit, along with everything else I had left behind in the advent of a wardrobe emergency at my parents!  Those socks were the perfect length for boots.  I was a little discouraged to have to wear my dad's too big socks when I put on my boots.  Now I have to be bothered with actually packing a pair of socks for my boots when I visit my folks.

I swanee.  My life is just so complicated.

Alright.  So now on with my very important observation.  As I dropped my bag on the floor, and pulled my sunglasses off my head and dropped them on the bedside table, I noticed something strange...

Do you see it?  Do You?  Well, perhaps if you have boys it would not strike you at all as noteworthy.  However, I live a life of Liv Dolls and Littlest Pet Shop.  I do NOT live a life of shell casings, pellets and Marvel comic books. 

And THAT Dear Reader, was the entire point of this completely pointless post!

Aren't you glad you suffered through with me?

Children Obey Your Parents!

I was really a good child.

Truly.

I just feel the need to state that before I share with you the following, inspired by a post by Freckled Hen.

The year was 1993.  At least I think it was 1993.  I'm pretty sure it was, because I recall my sister Paula being at my house and I think that was the summer she stayed with my parents before she ran off to Vegas to get married.

Clearly she was a good child too...

So.  It was probably 1993.  I was 17 years old.  It was summer and I was going into my senior year of high school, which I was pretty sure made me the next thing down from Queen of the Universe.

We had recently had rain.

That is relevant.  I promise.

I don't know why I was going to town this particular summer night.  It might have been to go drag main, or hang out with my then boyfriend who always treated me like doo doo, but I was still going to change him and make him love me by allowing him to treat me bad...You know.  Classic teenage stupidity.  Only I knew what I was doing.  Just ask anyone.

This post is having entirely too many rabbit chases...

As I was leaving, my mom reviewed my curfew rules, and told me "Do not go to the river."

Why did she tell me not go to the river?  I had never gone to the river in my life.  Unless of course one counts the previous May when all of my senior friends were graduating and my friend Sabra and I crashed their party on graduation night.  I had planned a "sleepover" at Sabra's.  However, we were going to the party, and THEN to her house.  Her mom didn't believe in curfews as she did not want Sabra to have a wreck trying to get home before curfew...

I have no idea why she thought kids might drive fast trying to get home for curfew.  After all, I certainly never drag raced my mom's Ford Taurus as I was leaving town.

Every single Saturday.

Like clockwork, 11:43 would roll around.  I was supposed to be home by midnight, and considering I lived 26 miles from town, I had to leave by 11:30 if I was going to drive the "55 stay alive" speed limit.  However, I could never get all of my socializing done in the allotted time frame.

So I sped.

Just a teeny bit.

I would say, "Oh no!  I gotta go or I'm gonna miss curfew."  And I would dash through the Jack & Jill parking lot, leap into my car and drive the exact speed limit as I was leaving town.  I wouldn't want to get a ticket after all!

As I would leave town and pass the transport road, a group of boys in a pickup would pull up on my rear bumper and flash their lights at me.  The boys varied from week to week, but every week I would slow down to oblige them in pulling along side me, ostensibly to let them pass.  Then I would PUNCH IT!  Did you know that a 1992 Ford Taurus has a governor that tops out at 135 miles per hour?  Did you know that the boys who drove old 1970s model pickups had no such governor holding them back?  They eventually beat me every time.  And they nearly always had a spare boy to moon me out the back window as they blew by me.

Curse that governor.

Okay.  That was a big bunny chase.  We were talking about what a great kid I was.  And that my mom had told me not go to the river.

I pulled into town.  I remember it was late afternoon.  I have no idea why I was in town in the late afternoon.  I do know that I met up with a group of random kids in the high school parking lot.  They were all "friends" but most of them were only friends in the sense that all kids in a town with 1200 people and one stop light are friends.

"Hey Ang! (for some reason my classmates called me Ang, or AJ.)  Want to go to the river?  We're going floating!"

I thought about it for all of two seconds, and I jumped into Jason's pickup and off we went!  We parked the cars on the side of the road, pulled out a bunch of blow up floats and hiked our way down to the river.  I, of course was looking super cute and had on my nice leather loafers.  I carefully tucked my socks into them, shrugged at the soon to be river smelly state of my cute outfit and climbed onto a pink lounge float.

And off we floated!

I don't remember how far we went.  I do remember that getting back was a challenge as we did not have shoes.  We walked in the sandy river bottom as far as we could, but some places it was too deep to walk, or too rocky, or whatever.  Then we would get out and hike along in the reedy grass along the bank.

I hung out in town for a few hours until I was dry enough to get into my mom's nice Taurus and drive home.  I remember it wasn't even dark out when I walked in, called "Hi!  I'm home!"  and headed straight to the bathroom, skillfully avoiding any direct conversation with the parents...

And there was Paula.  I immediately began to tug off my clothes and prepared to get in the shower.  Naturally, I told her what we had done.  Because I am a terrible secret keeper, and she was handy. I told her the worst part was that the crotch of my underwear never did get dry...

I don't remember what she said.

But I'm sure it involved carefully chosen words of wisdom and some eye rolls.  Paula always was better at keeping her counsel than I am.  

I do remember that the reason we wanted to float the river was because it was actually moving.  You see, we had received a heavy rain.  I'm not sure if this is the right year, but I think it's the year that we had such heavy rains that I spent a good chunk of the summer helping Dad rebuild fence at all of the creek gaps.

So, we decided to float...Of course, what looks like calm little currents could have been deadly undertows.  I know that for a fact as two boys in our area had been floating a similar river in a similar situation and drowned just two years before.  Of course, none of that crossed my mind as a teenager.  However, I guess Mom must have raised three teenagers or been one herself, because she was suspicious that we may decide to go visit the river after a heavy rain.

Oh, and about the senior graduation party that Sabra and I crashed?  Well, it turns out that Dad decided we needed to gather and work cattle first thing the next morning.  They called Sabra's mom to tell me to come home.  This was before the days of cell phones, so Sabra's mom got in her car and drove up and down Main looking for us.

Only we weren't there.

Then, she drove her car to the bridge over the river and honked her horn and yelled and yelled for us.  Only we could not hear her as we were quite a ways down the river, and we had country music blasting from some guy's pickup.  She eventually convinced a kid named Eric to pull over and told him to come get me.

Eric was a prankster and came roaring into the camp saying, "Hey Andrea, your dad's looking for you."

I nearly had a heart attack right then and there.  After he picked himself up off the ground from laughing at me, he told me the truth.  Sabra and I loaded up in her car and headed back to town.  When we walked into her house her mom started talking, "Where have you been?  I've been looking all over for you two.  I parked on the bridge and honked and yelled and you never came.  Andrea's dad said she has to go home to work cattle.  Ohmygoodness you smell like camp fire.  Go take a shower before you head home and wash your hair."

And so I did and she nearly had a stroke before I left.

And I came home and went to bed and got up at the crack of dawn to gather and work cattle.

Maybe my parents were more clued in to my activities than I thought.

Oh, and one more thing.  I got the "Safe Driver" award my Senior year of high school.  I was nominated by Mrs. Mulberry because every time she saw me driving I ALWAYS had on a seat belt.  Of course that is totally true!  I didn't want to die a horrendous bloody death if I had an accident driving!

This post is entirely too long.  I will test whether you made it to the end with a brief Reader Survey:

What kind of kid were you?  Were you like me, really good on the surface with a streak of orneriness a mile wide?  Were you straight as an arrow with a secretly rebellious heart?  Or were you out and out wild and woolly?  Do tell!

My Castle Is Complete

I realize some of you may be new to my blog...Although, since nobody COMMENTS any more, it's hard to tell!  And yes, that is a shameless ploy for more comments.  Anyway, that is not the point.  The point is that if you've been with me since the very beginning, you realize that while my house may in fact look like a typical middle class home, it is in fact a castle.  Complete with scullery maid.  You can click here to learn all about my fabulous life in a castle.

My Grandmama Dolly passed in January.  My mom and her siblings separated her belongings among themselves, and my mom had asked if I wanted anything.  "I was always fascinated by those chairs with the lion head and feet."  As it turned out, those had already been laid claim to.  I philosophically shrugged and said, "never mind.  Those chairs were too majestic for my garage sale/hand me down/eclectic house decorations anyway."

Guess what?  My mom called me a while back and said the chairs may be coming available again.  "I WANT THEM!"  I shouted into the phone before she could finish her sentence.  You see, my grandparents had a somewhat eclectic decor themselves.  From green flocked wallpaper paired with gray paneling, to chairs with lion heads carved into them and velvet bullfighter pictures, they had a little bit of everything.  Everything to be found at "ESTATE sales" that is.  "ESTATE Sale" is the more elite form of a garage sale.  You see, an estate sale apparently occurs when the family of the dearly departed simply cannot decide who gets what, so they have a giant auction and split the profits, or since it's an ESTATE and therefore very hoity toity, I'm sure the profits are donated to charity...

It is obviously nothing like it's low brow counterparts where people actually take the stuff from their dearly departed family member and then have a sale out of their garage and pocket every bit of the cash for themselves.

As you can clearly see, my grandparents only had the most discriminating tastes, and such things as a chair made from steer hide and longhorn horns, would not be found at your average run of the mill garage sales.  Such treasures as these could only be found at the very exclusive ESTATE SALE.

Okay, now that I've edified you with my vast knowledge of garage versus ESTATE sales, I will now show you what my darling husband brought home to me after a weekend of dove hunting with his brothers.  Carefully duct taped in sheets and blankets to keep their pristine condition, naturally.  At first, I was almost certain he brought home the wrong chairs.  After all, the chairs of my memory were huge and clearly once belonged in a haunted castle.  How or where my Grandpa had the opportunity to visit an ESTATE sale at a haunted castle, I was never completely clear on.  However, I was certain that these must surely belong in one!

Now that I'm the very modest age of 35, these chairs have shrunk considerably!  They are no longer giant arm chairs where I feel much like Lily Tomlin surely felt in her giant rocker when she played Edith Ann.  Instead, they are just perfectly ordinary sized arm chairs, with an unusual black upholstery and lion heads carved in the arms, with claw feet.

Oh, well.  I love them.  I can still picture their exact spot in the front living room of my Grandmama's house. I will treasure them for that reason, along with my childhood fanciful thoughts.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, my girls found them immediately fanciful.  In fact Popcorn said, "Now we can have the scary chairs with the old haunted Raggedy Anne doll sit right here in this corner."

Well, I resent that statement.  You see, I had a dear friend make me this doll.  She is gifted at making folk art crafts, and when we moved away, she gave me the doll, along with a pillow that is embroidered with "Live in such a way that those who know you but don't know God come to know God because they know you."  Isn't that beautiful?  Studmuffin, however has refused to allow the doll to sit on our bed.  He thinks it looks like a voodoo doll.  I scoff and say it's supposed to be folk art.  I fear we will never agree on the topic.

Apparently my girls agree.