James' wall

When we first moved into our house we painted one half of James' wall with magnetic paint. We thought that it would encourage him to use his imagination with the multitude of magnets we had acquired. It soon became a collecting wall of his treasures. He loves collecting paper. He loves getting receipts, especially the ones from Costco. He'll hold on to that smiley face receipt for as long as he can. Since he's started writing every scrap of paper is all of a sudden extremely important. He'll write a word on a little piece of paper and have a melt down if it gets lost. This is what his wall currently looks like, it has been scaled down a bit, I asked him what absolutely HAD to be there and this is what was left. Everything has a story and so, for posterity, I have to document it. I'm sure it will be added to in the future!
One of James' favorite shows is Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. One day they had an episode where the gang went camping and earned badges that looked somewhat like this. It was right up there with the treasure hunt episode as being his favorite ever. He HAD to have a badge and wore it pinned to his shirt for the whole day - it then got retired to the wall.
This was the tag from some pajamas bought months ago. He thinks it's a bed badge and he's all about collecting badges.
A painting done in art class at the children's museum. When I first put it on the wall I apparently had it upside down because it was supposed to be the forest at sunset, hence the sun at the bottom.
My parents took him to the circus a year ago where he "met" the clown named Bello. He wants to be a trapeze artist one day.
This is a daily reminder that he wants to be happy - not sad.
Application for a merit badge - enough said.
This was a picture in a frame that James would not let me throw away. I thought it was because he thought the girl was pretty but no, it's because of the fleur de lies symbol that James thinks is the scout symbol. Do you think that with Ben being Scoutmaster that my son has become brainwashed or something?
James loved the movie Speed Racer. This is for the new car Speed got, the M6 and it had to have a skull and crossbones.
I had a bunch of these printed out for my class and James thought it was a maze.

He loves being a CTR. When he doesn't have his CTR ring on he blames all his bad decisions on that fact. He says that wearing his ring reminds him to make right decisions :)
Once again, he loves Speed Racer. This is his drawing of Speed driving his car, he also wrote Speed Racer at the top. So if you're counting, according to the wall, James wants to be a Scout, a race car driver, a pirate, trapeze artist and a kid that makes only good decisions. I'll be encouraging the last one!