Busy Day

Lots to say and acknowledge. I'll start from the start.

Girlie took swimming lessons two summers ago, and try as hard as she might, she could never get past level two. I don't think her muscles were developed enough to do what was required to pass, and that was to swim across the short length of the pool without stopping to touch her feet on the bottom. We spent the entire summer doing level two over and over and over and over and over again.

Last summer I was a little busy giving birth to Sproutie and taking care of a newborn, so swim lessons were out.

So we started up swim lessons again after our trip to Chicago. Girlie began in level two again, and she sailed right through it this time. She got her patch and certificate last Friday. We celebrated with a pizza dinner in her honor.

Today she started level three, and I can already tell that she's going to sail through this one, too. I'm so very proud of her. My babies love the water. So does their dad. Notice I didn't mention that I did. Because I DON'T. There is nothing about swimming that I enjoy. Call me weird, but we all have our likes and dislikes, and I strongly dislike the water. I like to shower; that's about it where water is concerned.

ZimDee also started his lessons today. He's in the preschool class, which is just for fun, to get him comfortable with being in the water.

Here is a picture of my water babies at the pool:Zim's in the forefront, of course. If you look closely you can see Girlie sitting in the background. She's the skinny little thing sitting to the left of the wooden stool.

Girlie's old enough to shower and dress herself in the locker room after lessons, but ZimDee is just old enough to not be welcome in the girl's locker room, and of course I can't go in the boy's locker room. So it's quite a juggling act to get Zim dried off on the sidelines while also holding Sproutie and trying not to expose ZimDee. We had to wait for Girlie to come out of the dressing room and hold Sproutie so I could help ZimDee. Otherwise Sproutie would want to crawl right into the pool! And there's no room for strollers in the tiny spectator area. So I have my hands full.

After that exhausting experience (and it wasn't even noon yet!) what I wanted to do was, well, go straight to bed. Instead I had tons of errands to run, but had to run home because I forgot my cell phone. When I got home there was a package waiting for me from the very kind Jennifer. She held a little song contest on her blog where you listed three to five of your favorite songs, and I won the drawing! We opened the package right then and there in the car. Jennifer was such a doll, she even sent some goodies for the babies. Here is what we got:Girlie got a very nice journal for writing her stories in. She absolutely loves it.For Sproutie, she sent a little stuffed toy of Elmo's fish Dorothy, which ZimDee promptly snatched up. He is a huge fan of Elmo (and Spongebob, judging by the shirt)But don't worry, because Sproutie loved the Spiderman mask meant for Zim.Just look at that sweet little smile! But I got the good stuff. A pretty card, a zippered bag to hold all sorts of knitting gadgets, and a gorgeous ball of Artful Yarns Portrait. Thank you so much, Jennifer. You are far too kind. And thank you so much for thinking of my babies and putting a smile on their faces too!

And finally, a correction. One of the errands we had to run today was to pick up the items that we submitted to the fair and collect our ribbons (and moneys). Here is a picture of all of my submissions and ribbons. Notice anything? It turns out that my raspberry freezer jam won a second place ribbon after all! I had not brought a separate printed recipe, but instead wrote the recipe by hand on the back of the submission ticket. The judges' comments on the check sheet says "good".
Yay! Hooray! I feel so good that everything I submitted to the fair earned a ribbon. I also earned a total of $16 for my winnings ($4 for first place, and $3 for each second place). I kinda like this fair business.

My raspberry jam is quite good, by the way. If any of you readers ever come to my house I'll let you try some of my "award winning recipe" as we sit and drink our tea.

But best of all, look what we found attached to Girlie's homework submission when we went to pick it up:Yes, my friends, it's a green "Youth Participation" ribbon and Girlie was so excited to get it that she didn't know what to do with herself. The look on her face when she saw the ribbon is one that I will never forget. I shared one of my dollars with her and she was proud as she could be.

Life is good.