Latest Pictures

We all did our pictures tonight! Nice to be back on track. Owen is a robot, Ryan is climbing a tree at Riverside Outfitters' tree climbing camp, and I captured Ryan's new backpack from camp.

Day 11?

My view this evening trying to wrap up some car repairs. Didn't quite finish. Seems the problem with doing this at the end of the day is we get squeezed for time. Last night swim meet, tonight we had top take a neighbor's car to the airport so they could drive themselves home. I'm going to do my best to keep this up daily and just try to remind the kids a little earlier. Now to bed.

Catching up

Wanted to get the latest pics up. Will add details later today.

Day 10 will be posted in the am.

We did them, I'm just going to go to bed. :-)

Day 9, sort of back on track

We vacated our house tonight while our neighbor borrowed our house for a video shoot. He's making a promotional video for a local school and he his friend and the 'talent' would be doing some shots in Owen's room and outside. We'll see how it turns out. So we took the boys to see Cars 2 and by the time we got home, brushing teeth was about all we could muster. I'll let them do their drawings tomorrow but per my personal commitment, I did mine.

This afternoon Ryan's swim team had their post swim team party and he was awarded a 6th place ribbon for the breast stroke in the boy's Mite class. He was pretty excited and called me at work to tell me about it. So,...



Good night!

Day 8, back on track.

Swim meets go on far too long (I won't get started on that topic). However, when we asked the boys two hours past their bed time if they still wanted to draw their pictures, the little troopers went at it.

Ryan has taken to reading on his own and proudly told me how much he has read. I didn't quite capture his style but I love Jeff Kinney's illustrations in the books.

Owen had a dentist appointment today and Ryan went along. He was able to be the dental assistant and aided in the cleaning of Ryan's teeth.

Owen has drawn a messy monster. We're letting him create whatever he would like to draw and he loves it.

Day 7

Just got home from Music in the Park and got them clean and in bed. We all agreed to do them tomorrow morning. Good night.

Day 6: Just missed.

So I'm working on the rickshaw for the boy's former preschool when I realized the boys went to bed! My fault.

I finished the repairs and now Suzie can paint it. This is one of the favorite playground item at the preschool.

Day 5 (original title, eh?)

I think I need to figure out how to post these earlier. So the boys went to Cafe Ole for lunch today. The helpful young man there knew Ryan has peanut allergies and couldn't enjoy their chips, so he cut up a flour tortilla and toasted it just for Ryan. Good service goes a long way. Ryan even told me about it on our way to try to see the Richmond Squirrels play.

So, here is Ryan's drawing for tonight. Yep, you guessed it... hand toasted flour tortilla chips from Cafe Ole.


Likewise, Owen decided to capture the table in the restaurant. You see a chair, table and the salsa containers with lids.


And finally, mine. As mentioned earlier, Ryan and I tried to head to the statium to see the ball game but it was rained out. It wasn't raining when we left the car but before we got to the ticket booth, the skies opened up.

Day 4

This evening while I was making dinner, I saw Ryan kneeling at the end table with his back to me. I suggested he make his daily drawing and he replied, "I'm doing it now." I think they are enjoying this.

So Suzie wasn't feeling well this morning. Later in day she informs me that the tick bite she had gotten at Cousin Camp was red and inflamed and she was heading to the doctors. She mentioned concerns over Rocky Mountain Spotted fever but the blood tests will take a day or more. I choose to:
1. Not Google "Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever" until after the test results and,
2. Draw this:



Ryan and Owen both hung out at my sister-in-laws until I could swing by and pick them up. Their cousin likes to suck on lemon wedges (must be related to incomplete taste bud development) and that lead to making individual glasses of fresh lemonade. Hence their drawings tonight. Owen had a couple attempts so please ignore the scratched out figures on the left.

Ryan's:



Owen's:

Day 3 of how many again?

Wow, I can see that for me personally this is one of the longer commitments I've made to doing something on a regularly scheduled basis. Another challenge for me and as I discovered when I attended Noah's workshop at GEL 2011 was that you need to make a decision and stick with it. Don't second guess yourself or worry if it's not "creative enough", just push through and there is where you discover things about yourself. The boys are fine. It's just my neurosis. So, we continue.

Ryan wanted to capture the flag his cousin Abby produced for their "Cousin Camp". This was where all the cousins on Suzie's side of the family (I'm the only sibling on my side w/ kids) spend a week at their Grandmothers house. Abby sewed a flag to fly for the week and Ryan has represented it here. We realized that Abby and Charlie's dog, Othello was there as well but his paw was forgotten!



Owen,... Owen has quite the imagination and I love it. This picture emerged, morphed and was being modified as he described it. I should have just recorded him explaining it. He titled it, "U.S.S. Eklund Airplane." It features a lot of stuff including Ryan watching TV (the show is depicted on the screen), multiple rooms including cannons, Baby O-O, some hallways,... yep, lots of stuff.



Mine captures the moment my boss took me over to our UX team's library. I didn't notice the exact books on there since there is a white board leaned against it. However today when I inquired if anyone has Kim Goodwyn's Designing for the Digital Age, I was told we did and was shown a fine collection of UX books. :-)

The Fourth is the Fifth

While returning from swim team competition at Three Chopt, we were lucky enough to see the rescheduled fireworks display at Dogwood Dell. Suzie spotted them as we approached I195 on I64. I was able to park just off Cary St where we saw several minutes of the display and the grand finale. First time we ever watched them from the car! We were all very impressed with the variety of shapes, colors and multiple combinations of fireworks.

So here are tonight's creations.

Owen is depicting himself, Mommy, Daddy, Ryan, and Baby O-O (Oh-Oh) (?, no we don't have a 3rd child) watching fireworks. Baby O-O has his own pop-up playhouse.


Ryan has illustrated a crowd of people watching the fireworks under the crescent moon that was out tonight.


I've chosen to capture a scene from the B-Race at the Bryan Park Crits this evening. This one I call, Breakaway at Bryan Park and no, I'm not the one breaking away.

So, new habits are hard to start.

Well even thought fireworks were cancelled due to the thunderstorms, we still managed to focus on getting the kids to bed at a reasonable hour and forgot to do our drawings. So I thought we'll just start tomorrow then I remembered two things that are important for this project:

1. Leading by example. Letting my kids see me creating things and,
2. The discipline of doing this activity each day as I committed to do.

So my kids liked my quick sketch this morning and as I headed out of the house Owen started on his.

So my sketch is Lightening from 195. As we returned from my mother-in-law's we could see the storm brewing from the south. I love the views from the elevated highways downtown, in particular the 195 west exit ramp that puts you under the 195 east bound lanes.

And so it begins. Thanks, Noah Scalin!

This blog is being setup to capture the Eklund family's daily creativity project, inspired by Skull-A-Day creator and fellow Richmonder, Noah Scalin. (Check out his site, buy his book and be inspired. 365 A Daily Creativity Journal : Make Something Everyday and Change Your Life)



With Ryan 7, Owen 5, Suzie (age undisclosed), and Chris 44 (going on 16) - we needed a project that would allow all of us to participate, wherever we were, every day of the summer. We decided on drawing something we did or saw each day of the summer on 3x5 index cards for each day starting July 4th, 2011 until the first day of school this fall. I will post a picture of each and a brief description as told by the artist.

My hope is that our family will collectively pay more attention to each other, appreciate each others talents, and remember this really cool thing we did as well as each day we did it.

Thanks for reading and following along!
Chris