Birthdays and Coloring

Mama and I

My mom and my mother-in-law have the same birthday. Strange, isn't it? When we were dating, my husband and I thought it was awesome... now it's just difficult. No, it's still awesome, it just requires more planning.When you live close enough to spend time with both families, you're expected to be at every event (and you want to be at very event), and you need to split time during the holidays. It definitely has it's up side (we get to see a ton of family all the time) but it can be a bit stressful to figure out.

This year, in an effort to make sure neither mother felt left out, we ended up somehow planning two events for each of them over a period of two weeks, and there will likely be a joint dinner thrown in somewhere in the mix for good measure.

The first birthday celebration was a little birthday lunch with my mom. We had a yummy lunch at my sister's home and then we colored. Yes, we colored.

My mother's daughters and my mother herself have this thing in common: we all love coloring. I gave everyone coloring books for Christmas one year, my sister got me a paint-by-numbers kit for my birthday this year, and for my mom's birthday we colored. It relieves stress, it's creative, beautiful, and it's a fun thing to do whilst visiting or watching a movie or listing to general conference. I can't get enough of it.

I have several coloring books of my own, and the thing I love about them is that they're made with grown ups in mind. They are so much fun to color.

When I was little, I would go through my Disney princess or Living Scripture coloring books and find all the ladies. I would color their lips, their nails, their jewelry, shoes (anything that set them apart as a princess) and then I would move on to the next page. I would also use primarily pink, red, and purple. It's fun to use browns, greens, and yellows now.

A few Christmases ago my mom and two of my sisters photocopied a page out of a coloring book and spent an hour or so coloring the same picture and seeing how they differed in the end. It was amazing how different they all looked. I can only find pictures of two of them, sadly, but they were amazing!

These are some other pages I've colored out of my other books. See? Not so kidsy as you'd think. It's sometimes actually difficult to stay in the lines...

For my mom's birthday lunch we all colored this sweet little picture. Even my little niece (can you spot hers?) My little nephew did one as well (it's cut off a bit in the picture) but his was a picture of a little boy with chickens. My sister gave us each a little bundle of colored pencils and we could only use what we had. It was a fun little challenge. My picture is the little Snow White girl. If you loved coloring as a child, I suggest picking it up again.