“I feel like I’m a kid on summer vacation again” was my initial thought after strolling through Lawrence Artist Constance Ehrlich’s exhibit What I Did On My Summer Vacation—an apt feeling considering this is the Sabatini Art Gallery’s eighth Annual Exhibit for Children.

Ehrlich’s series of oil paintings, which show cartoon characters and other popular culture images in authentic vacation experiences, appeals to the young and old at heart. See her work May 1 through June 12 at the gallery.

Ehrlich’s paintings remind me of pictures my family would take on vacation, off-center, with someone not looking at the camera and with our bodies accidently cropped out of the frame. Ehrlich adopts this effect on purpose to bring an authentic vacation feel to her artwork.

But, the real authenticity comes in when one reads the descriptions next to each painting, which are written from a child’s point of view. For example, “I rode on a train to see the ‘I Feel Tower.’ It was not laying down any more. Someone must of stood it back up” accompanies a picture of a gnome standing in front of Paris’ most recognizable landmark. This one cracked me up for some reason.

It’s this world of the whimsical that makes Ehrlich’s paintings so appealing. She captures the kid in all of us. You can’t help but laugh at the descriptions she has written for each painting. Ehrlich takes us back to our own childhood when our toys seemed to have lives of their own and had to travel with us everywhere.

As you look at these paintings, I hope you are drawn into the lives of these toys. I was so sucked in I was left wanting to know more about the toys’ vacations. I was also caught reminiscing about my favorite toy as a child, Ernie from Sesame Street. If you’d like to share what your favorite toy as a child was or what you thought of the exhibit, please leave a comment below.

And make sure to take the time to mark your own journey on an interactive map in the gallery’s Jewel Box. Visitors can write down where they want to go in the word and pin it to a map. Another map highlights some of Kansas’ most-visited destinations. Pretty cool.