Bake off!

Hey everyone!

So this is sort of a different post, but I need everyone's help. My mom entered a recipe into the pillsbury bake off and she is a finalist to make it into the final bake off competition! Can you believe it? She is so awesome!

So anyway here's the deal, she is on an internet bake off contest where people can vote for their favorites and that winner will go to the final bake off competition. In my mind she is already a winner, I mean can you even imagine how many people must submit recipes?!

We want to try to get her to the actual bake off competition, though. So if you can, will you go vote for her recipe on pillsbury.com? You can use this link http://www.pillsbury.com/BakeOff or just go to pillsbury.com then click on bake off contest. She is Marjean Bigelow from Portland Oregon and she made Luscious Brownie Caramel Bites, which is a mini muffin sized brownie bites baked in a pie shell with caramel and chocolate ganache. As my friend Katie said--you had me at brownie!

These are soooo good, you guys. Seriously. Her recipe is supposed to be posted tomorrow at noon and will be up for a couple of weeks. So please, take a few minutes and vote for her and tell everyone you know!!

**Also, my sister said that you have to create a login and to use a junk email address so that you don't get a bunch of stuff in your inbox.

Thank you in advance!!

Swimming Lessons

Yesterday we started swimming lessons. By we, I mean all four of us. G is in level one, E is in the preschool class, and Miss H and I do the mom and baby class. It seems to me that swim lessons are just one of those rites of passage that a mom and her kids have to go through, and are a sort of bizarrely entertaining/annoying experience. 

G does pretty well. And by pretty well, I mean that he actually goes to his class and semi does what the teacher tells him to. You wouldn't think this is much of an accomplishment, but then again if you have ever had the lovely experience of attending swim lessons you would know quite differently. One boy in his class cries the entire time the teacher tries to get him to swim on his back--these are five year olds people. I just imagine how his mother probably feels as she watches. 

Oh wait, she probably feels like I did when I kept looking over to see E in his preschool class the first day. Scratch that--I could never find him the first day. That's because rather than being with his class, he took it upon himself to wander around the shallow end. He visited his brother, tested the depth of the pool, tried to play with whatever toys he could find, etc. It was grand. On the other hand, however, he was the only one of four kids in his class to enter the water without screaming and crying and clinging to his mom--so I am going to count that as a win. By way of improvement, today when I looked over he was actually with the class participating!! Hallelujah. My primary goal for him is to not get kicked out of the pool. If we can make it through the next two weeks without that happening I'm going to call this a raging success. 

Finally, there is Miss H and me in the tot class where I have made a realization: I hate doing this sort of stuff. Seriously. We sing and twirl around and do all sorts of baby things. I feel like a total moron and wonder how this could feel 10 times longer than 30+ minutes spent jogging. Then I feel doubly awful because--seriously what is my problem? Everyone else is singing and doing the actions so why do I feel like such a geek? But there it is.

So this is where I recommit myself and say, this is part of being a mom. Sometimes you drag your kids to  (and from) the pool. You sing a song in a swimsuit and just suck it up and feel like a frustrated dork. You do it because that is what that child needs and being a parent means being the bigger person and sacrificing for someone else. So for the next two weeks we are creating memories. We are dirty, and tired, and messy, and probably ridiculous, but we are doing it and we are doing it together. 

And it's worth it.