with pictures like these...

we should have a pretty interesting valentine this year!

yikes!

okay so we've been homeschooling for a few months now and bubba is really catching on quickly! he already recognizes all of his colors, shapes and the uppercase letters of the alphabet. he loves to paint, color and use glue. he can count to 10 and add simple additions. (1+2, 2+2, 1+3..any number under 5 plus another number under 5) he is really good at following directions and is getting better and better at sounding letters out. we have recently started learning to write letters. when you consider that he's not even 4 yet, i think that is really good!
he enjoys learning, he frequently asks for ''school time.'' the only thing that i can't give him or teach him is the social interaction that preschool provides. i planned on enrolling him in a church based preschool in february or at least get him on the waiting list for next year. but that's the sad thing, even if i get him on the list in february--he's not guaranteed a spot for next year!.

luckily for us, our city's park and recreation department is awesome! while they don't have a lot of sport activities for the 4 and under crowd (micro-soccer and dance is it) they offer a preschool program! it's a little less structured than regular preschool but i think it will be perfect for bubba and his social needs. first of all, it's in a community building, it's an hour and a half each day and the teachers are other moms; they don't necessarily have a teaching license but they have experience with children (and passed a background check). basically they are like me but they work in the social setting rather than at home! (and oddly enough, several of the church preschools around here don't have certified teachers either!)

so this program has a 2 day/week option or a 4 day/week option. because it's only 1.5hrs each day, we opted to enroll bubba in the 4 day week session. there are 16 kids total in his class and he starts monday.

monday as in this coming monday...that will be here in 5 days. yikes!!

while i was all for enrolling him, i have to say this is happening quite quickly! i honestly thought the class would probably be full (it was last semester) so when i called i didn't have high hopes but thought we might get into a 2 day session, even if it wasn't the days that we wanted. well, there were 3 spots left and bubba snagged one! i was excited and emotional all at the same time. my oldest baby is going to do something all by himself and honestly while i'm a bit emotional about it, he's not happy about it. at all.

he knew that some day, he would go to school. so when he woke up from his nap i explained to him that he would start monday. his response "no, i just don't want to. i do school at home'' and pooks response? ''me go to school mama, me do. all by myself me do''. well pooks can't go, while he is potty trained, he doesn't meet the age requirement. he won't be able to enroll until the fall. (or in toddler terms, he can't go until after his firetruck birthday party). bubba was insistent that he didn't want to go, then he finally decided that if i could go with him it might be okay. i tried explaining that while i can take him the first day, i will be dropping him off and then coming back as soon as it's over. he kinda gave me this look of disbelief then asked to watched scooby-doo.

end of that conversation!

i'm going to try to keep easing him into the idea, i know it will definitely be something that he will like and that he will benefit from--it's getting him through the door that i'm worried about!

whenever you see this face....

run!
and not because it's highly creepy and terrifying
this means that B has transformed into a lion, which coincidentally the boys love. it leads to loud, general chaotic mayhem and tickling for a good 30+ mins. it usually ends in either; a)one giant dogpile when B decides that he's had enough or b) someone gets hurt. (it's all fun and games until somebody gets hurt!) luckily tonight it ended by option a and it allowed all 3 kiddos to fall fast asleep! apparently wrestling and dogpiling a lion is exhausting work.

peanut wasn't very scared, thats for sure!

i ♥ this one, they are all so smiley

and apparently at the end of all this, peanut decided to blog about it:

flashback! poloroid

i don't think that i ever blogged about what i received for christmas from B. and i don't mean that in a bragging way, i bring it up because it pertains to the blog.

on my little christmas list was the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II lens. it's prime lense; it has a fixed focal length and is absolutely superb for taking fairly close shots crystal clear while blurring the background at the same time. while i am still getting the hang of it (it's odd not to zoom in and out but literally stand the distance that you want from the subject) i already ♥ it!

here are a few photos from last night, taken with the new lens and then i applied a 'time machine' feature that my paintshop program has; this particular one is to imitate poloraid cameras in the 1960's. which i thought was a pretty neat combination.

the following picture of bubba is him, standing literally 10 inches from me while saying ''cheese''.
see how clear it is? (u can click on it and bring it up humongous) see how clearly you can see the strawberry seed stuck in his tooth, lol? amazing huh?

here is one of peanut, being ornery after finding my lens cap. notice how out of focus the background is? this is with absolutely no photo-editing (other than adding the poloroid effect)
and lastly, my seriously little pookie whose look clearly says ''i am so completely over it, stop taking my picture". notice how he pops from the background? i am freaking in love people!
while it's not my everyday-everyuse lens, it's amazing. i just love the clarity and contrast.

okay, okay just one more. remember how i said nanaw and papa came over and hung out with us on new years eve? here is nanaw with the little dudes-
and yes, i realize that bubba is chewing on his arf, peanut is attempting to steal pooks' blanket and pooks is hanging on for dear life. this is the best i got, work with me people!

greatest invention ever

as i type this blog post i am simultaneously using the greatest invention ever. it has absolutely nothing to do with the computer or blogging, it's actually something that i dreamed up years ago although i had no clue how to patent it or make up a demo piece.

i ♥ brownies. they are my favorite dessert by far.

like most completely normal brownie loving people, i prefer the corner pieces. who doesn't? chewy outside, super gooey inside..they are perfect. the annoyingly huge problem? there are only 4 corners on a pan which thus results in only 4 corner pieces. well if more than 4 people are eating brownies then you're screwed. no deliciously good corner piece for later.

years ago i dreamed up a solution. i needed a pan, much like a muffin pan, but instead of round inlets, it needed square inlets. (lets face it, a muffin tin won't work for brownies because muffins are circles and circles don't have corners). my mental invention was not ''the perfect brownie'' pan that is being sold ''on tv only'' except not really because you can buy it anywhere. that is NOT the perfect brownie pan, that is a cheap piece of crap. (no offense if you have one or invented it) i am not wanting a square grid to place in my brownie pan. no. that is not really going to make chewy delicious corner pieces, let's face it. while i would have happily accepted one if i had received it for christmas, it was not my invention.

fast-forward to new years eve. after getting the kids tucked into beds, nanaw and i went over to target to check out their christmas clearance stuff and to pick up a kitchen rug (side note, i totally now have gorgeous ceramic tiles in my kitchen instead of that ugly 1974 linoleum). while wandering aimlessly around target, i discovered something. be still my heart, it was my mental invention. a REALLY truly perfect brownie pan! (a glorified square muffin pan as my dad called it later.) it was exactly what i had mentally designed; it was as if Kitchen Essentials by Calphalon had crawled into my brain and printed off my mental image of the pan then mass produced it and sold if for a mere $17.99 at a Target near you! (note, it's cheaper than the other so called perfect brownie pan!)
i was so excited, i couldn't put it down. there was one left, and i had to have it. in fact, i used $20 of my christmas money to purchase it! nanaw had to remind me that it was okay to set it in the cart, no one was going to steal it from me, i didn't need to carry it throughout the store. (true story). we grabbed the pan, immediately headed to the baking aisle to grab a brownie mix (don't hate, we all know brownie mixes are way better than made from scratch brownies) that had 3 types of chocolate in it!

as soon as we got home i excitedly shared my purchase with b and papa, who honestly, could have cared less. well that's not completely true, b said ''just think how much money you would be making if you had really just invented the thing years ago instead of talking about it everytime you made brownies''. gee, thanks hon. i believe this is when my father made the above ''glorified muffin pan'' statement.

so i immediately mixed up the brownies and got them baking. 18 minutes later (note if you buy one of these bad boys--they bake up much faster than regular brownies--watch 'em) we feasted our eyes on 12 'corner' brownies. they were wonderful. they were baked at 9pm on thursday night and completely gone by saturday morning.

so (just for the sake of this blog post) i made another batch. after all how can i blog and brag about brownies without having pictures to share? what kind of blogger would i be? it's not like i was actually hungry for brownies again. geez people, what do you think i am, some sort of brownie addict? well i didn't actually have another box of brownie mix so i made these from scratch. not really impressed at all.
is it just me or is it impossible to get that flakey top crust when you make brownies from scratch? so just ignore the lack of a flakey top crust and admire all those corners and peanut butter chips! yumm-o.
now if you will excuse me, i should probably test one of these before my kids wake up. yeah, that sounds good. i'm just testing them. everyone knows that if you're testing them the calories don't count! happy sunday ya'll!