Buttery yumminess

Last night I cooked up a batch of French Breakfast Puffs from Pioneer Woman Cooks. We had our monthly 7:00 a.m. staff meeting today. I was literally sick to my stomach when I went to bed - I made them in a mini-muffin pan and I must have had four of them! This morning I warmed them a bit in the microwave before setting them out. Everyone raved about them. And I am not a baker. Ok, well, I am a pretty good bread baker, but not much of anything else. Everything I make turns out pretty ugly. With these, it doesn't matter. You dip them in melted butter and roll them in cinnamon sugar, so you can't really tell what the original muffin/cupcake looked like! Yes, I said you dip them in melted butter. Mmmmmmmm.

My kids are loving their new charter school. This was the best move ever made. This school actually gets it - that each child is different, and may learn differently, but they are all capable of learning. They are each really good at lots of different things- even if it's not sitting in a chair behind a desk for six hours a day.

I love learning. I always have. There's few things I enjoy more than taking a class or spending an evening researching everything there is to know about something. I'll go off on a tangent, and I don't want to stop and do something else right when it's getting good. I've wanted to ignite that spark in my children, and it's not always easy when they spend their days feeling like square pegs in round holes. NWDS feeds their minds. When the Prince started, and didn't have the experience yet at borrowing in subtraction, the teacher took him aside, dumped beans into cups and showed him in a way that he "got it" immediately. He came home that night and told me that he felt smart. He hadn't said this all year.

I was putting Princess Jelly Bean to bed night before last. She had her "Angry Octopus" CD in (guided relaxation) but also wanted to read her "C is for Clown" book. She was getting really good at sounding the words out. A hug and kiss, and then as I left the room, she yelled, "Mom. Come back in here, NOW!" I ran in, thinking she'd seen a spider or something worse. "Honey, what is it?"

"Can you please close the closet door? It's really freakin' me out."

I had to laugh. Not only was this an adorably cute choice of words for my 5 year old, but that was my EXACT phobia when I was a child.