home made snacks

after slicing them with a peeler, we put them in some olive oil and spread them out individually on a cookie sheet.

the peeled layers of the sweet potato.

a full tray lightly basted with olive oil. once the tray is full, it goes into the oven set at 350 for about 8-10 minutes. next, i took them out, flipped them over (yes, individually- it took forever!)

after about 5-8 more minutes they come out looking lik this! i very lightly salt them, and put them in a container

they turned out really good! they may not look like much, but they taste awesome! diana and i quickly scarfed them down as soon as they were cool enough to eat!

the whole thing was kind of fun and gave us some really tasty results- we will have to try it again!

school do

cutting around those ears, making sure everything looks pretty.

she did a really good job, and it was obvious to me that she is much more sure of herself since last time she cut my hair- she gets better by the day!

the finished product!

super classroom 2

keeping watch over the front of the room is good old batman! notice how the cape comes curling back up further down the white board.
last year one of my students gave me this batman for christmas (not entirely sure why, but its pretty cool so i'll take it) so i decided to make it the classroom mascot this year!

trying to keep on the whole 'justice league of america' vibe, i tried to make one of the cutouts in my room of martian manhunter. not many of the kids knew who this was, but they liked him anyway!

last, but not least, our old friend wonder woman!

along with the decorations up in the room i also got the workbooks ready for the first day of school when i get to hand them out to the kids.

super classroom 1

i was a bit snobby about my superheroes. when it comes to comic books that i actually like, i usually stick with the ones put out by DC comics. the heroes are pretty cool, but its the amazing writing that kept me coming back. so all of my heroes on the walls were from DC comics, not a single marvel character in the bunch. a few kids asked me 'why dont you have spiderman?' cause i dont like him, deal with it!

superman and the flash were the two that i had from last time, i decided to add some blurr lines this time to make it look like he was actually running.

green lantern is busy sending out green messages over the door way. i filled the green blob coming from his ring with a bible passage about going out into the world.

aquaman! i couldnt find any better pictures to base it off, but i did find a few from one of the old series. he looks like he is going to jump stright into the window!

babysat: the rest

as mema and papa were packing the kids up to take them back to sandy pines bubba decided that he was going to take his turn to drive!

aves called shotgun!

a few extra pictures of the weekend: tweets helping out and vacuming up after snacktime.

bubba enjoying a few extra cartoons...

jeffry lee and freddie on friday night when they stopped by.

big boys and girls

tweets, mema, and aves having a good time.

papa, bubba, and i smiling big for the camera.

mema fell victim to the 'i want to take a picture now!' trick as well!

stick her 2

her face: the perfect canvas!

bubba wasnt content to just put them on his face, he spread them out all across his chest and belly as well!

one dollar for a half hour of fun? well worth it!

stick her 1

bubba coloring his pack of green velvet stickers.

i made sure to put the bottom of the box under aves because i knew she wasnt going to be able to stay on the stickers! looks like i was right...

tweets loved coloring the little animals and flowers on her blue velvet stickers.

where should we put the stickers? well, your face is as good a place as any!

kids and shake

tweets opening up her straw in eager anticipation for the coming shakes!

aves took full advantage of the free crayons they gave us.

bubba brought his new transformer with so he could play with it while we waited for the food.

another one of those 'uncle mark- i want to take a picture too!' photos.

bubba shows off his full belly and looks like he could take a nap right then and there!

prizes! video 2

tweets got a ball to bounce on- it even had the disney princesses on it, which are her favorite!
bubba got a cool new transformer that turned into a motorcycle. his favorite part was the name of the robot: lugnutz. he laughed about that all night!

prizes! video 1

aves got a horse that made sounds, here's a video of her trying it out.

girls only video

heres a cute video of the girls playing with their toys. it soon leads way to some dancing! its funny, tweets wanted to see the video even before i was done recording it! i'm sure she will learn how it works eventually...

girls only

aves playing with her american girl stuff.

tweets wanted me to do her hair and 'make it look real pretty!'

she decided that she wanted the flower on the side, not the back. i guess im still learning about this whole fashion thing...

another case of tweets wanting to take a picture just because i did. can you tell tweets likes girly stuff?

buckaroo rodeos

tweets brushes her teeth as she gets ready for bed.

'uncle mark, i can still taste the vitamin!'

one last try at winking before bed!

we all scream

aves can be a bit dramatic when it comes to yummy treats!

bubba and tweets enjoying their frozen snack.

sandy kids 2

while bubba and tweets were getting cleaned up aves asked if i would go up into the play area with her. well who could say no to that? we played around with the toys up there for a little while, but then it was her turn to get clean!

a quick shot before the comb went through her hair.

all squeeky clean!

hey there, bag head!