Caleb, Aiden, and the Wolf: Creative Tales From California

Today I want to talk about creativity. When I was a child, it was greatly celebrated, but I was never so sure that I actually possessed any of this creativity stuff. There were only two subjects I disliked in school: P.E. (We’ve talked about this) and Art. Yep. I never liked Art. I love to admire other people’s artwork. I would just rather not make any myself.

Sure, I write all the time. Non-fiction. All of my work is simply jotting down what happened, what’s funny, and what is true. Reading fantasy, sure, I’ll do that. Dream up fantasy? Wait. I do that too, but I keep those thoughts to myself. Be thankful.

So today, I’m going to let Caleb tell the stories. His stories are grounded in fantasy, but they sound quite believable. In fact, one of them IS TRUE. See if you can guess which one.

The photo wall I’m most proud of. This is as creative as I get folks: picture arrangement.

See my fire-place mantel scarecrow. You can buy him at Hobby Lobby, often on sale. It makes me smile every time I look up at my fun fall mantel.

Caleb’s Stories #1: Aiden, the Wolf, and Me   (Written as Told by Caleb)

One day me and Aiden were playing in the woods. This was before we all got poison oak, and you told us we couldn’t play back there any more, Mom. We were just on the edge of the woods. All of a sudden, we saw this whole herd of deer, and they just came running by us. They didn’t even see us.

Me and Aiden were like, “Whoa! What the…” Then a WOLF ran by!!  Two wolves! Two wolves were chasing the deer, because it was getting dark outside. Aiden and I just froze.

One of the deer was so scared, he even fell off the little bridge into the ditch! I guess he just wasn’t looking where he was going or something, but then he was stuck down there and couldn’t get out.

It was the scariest day of our lives.

Each of the boys drew a self-portrait in art class at school. I thought this was impressive for a kindergartener! Daniel is a perfectionist, so he covered up some black splotches with paper, as you can see.

Nonna has her house all decked out for fall too, and I thought this turkey centerpiece she made was cute and festive.

Story #2: The Raccoon Family

One day, it was starting to get dark, and Joshua and Aiden and I were playing in that big tree. You remember, that one that was so awesome for climbing? We saw a whole family of raccoons come out of the SEWER!

The dad was super fat, too. Then there were like four little raccoon babies. They were so adorable! Like kittens! We wanted to pet one, but of course, we didn’t because we were a little bit scared to do that. We tried to throw a rock at the big fat dad, but then we were like, no, just kidding, and we didn’t throw a rock at him. We did scare him though, and we didn’t think he’d be able to fit back into that sewer. It was hilarious!! We were all dying laughing.

Nonna created this coffee table arrangement with a basket and fall gourds and silk flowers. Love it!

Even our littlest man has been getting creative.

I just loved how Caleb set this table up. That’s an octopus, wearing a baseball cap, with its tentacle wrapped around JD’s sock monkey.

Last, but not least:

Story #3: Bats!!!

One day, it was starting to get dark, and Aiden and I were still playing outside. We were whacking the trees on the hill behind our house with sticks. Whack! Whack! Whack! Whack! Then, all of a sudden, like FIVE bats flew out of the tree we were hitting!!! Aiden and I looked at each other with the wide eyes like, “Aughhhhhh!” Then we just took off running. He ran to his house, and I ran to our house. It was crazy. I’d never seen bats that close before.

Daniel’s drawing of Grandaddy

Before: Our new house has these two windows that you could see through a little too well.

The new window treatment was hard to photograph from outside, so I took this photo from inside. See the pretty new windows? Alan got these static cling strips from Lowe’s and stuck them right on there. Now you can’t see straight into our living room any more.

Caleb loves to draw sharks, and he’s also enamored with that swirly-sky Monet painting. You can sometimes see signs of that in his art. Looks like this boat is in a lot of trouble.

We love to draw monsters.

Spongebob characters, by Caleb

My husband is surprisingly creative too. I guess that’s where the kids get it from.

Recently, the cover completely fell off of my Bible. Alan decided to fix it for me one morning while I was away and surprised me with this when I got home:

Duct-Tape Bible cover

Teal is my favorite color, so he bought teal duct-tape and white duct-tape. Then he wrapped my Bible in it. It turned out cute too!

The original burgundy cover doesn’t even show through.

I was impressed.

So which of Caleb’s 3 stories do you think was true? Leave your guess down below or on Facebook, and I will tell you if you got it right. If you haven’t liked my Facebook page yet, be sure to do so. It’s hard to keep up both a personal FB page and a blog FB page, so I am trying to move to primarily using the blog FB page. You can follow me on Facebook here.

Happy fall, y’all!!