Today is National Crayon Day. This brings a celebration of decades of creativity that has been influenced by those fun, mini cylinders full of waxy colors. It also brings back memories of opening that brand new box of crayons! Am I the only one who liked seeing the fresh points of each new crayon as it stood in the box and still in order of light to dark colors? Then of course there is the smell of the crayons too.

This has uprooted many wonderful memories from my childhood as my friends and I would find a nice shady porch, usually at my friend Tracey’s house, and we would get our coloring books out and color and chat for hours.

My own children loved to color as well. But by the time they came around, you could get crayons that had glitter in them, or ones that would color on fabric! One of our favorite pastimes was taking all of the older crayons and melting them together to make one big multicolored crayon!

Many years ago, before I had children of my own, I was at a family function at my in-laws house. There were about eight kids under the age ten who needed a bit of entertaining. I found a box full of an assortment of crayons and some coloring books in a closet. I spread them out onto the floor in the corner of a room and began coloring in one of the books. One by one, the kids started coming over and sitting on the floor with me to color. We talked about many things including pets and favorite games they liked to play. It was fun for the kids and myself and great entertainment too!

I would urge all of you to sit down with your kids and color and create with them. Make a lasting memory. Kids love to see when the adults in their lives enjoy doing the same things that they do, even when it’s sharing a box of crayons and a coloring book. Give it a try!