...I write my essay.

You know, the one you had to write on the first day of school, every year. The one entitled "What I did on my summer vacation." I had to write one every year except the year that I did something REALLY cool. When Big Brother gets ahold of my old essays, they will think I did nothing but surf all three channels we had back in the day, and go to Mount Rushmore.

Well, I'm happy to report that I did something REALLY cool this year. So here goes.

This summer I rocked as a mom, as per my usual. My son became the FIRST EVER three-peat WORLD champion building robots. Now, this is not like in baseball where the world champions are us (when I say us I really mean a lot of foreign born players and three guys from Nebraska) vs. Canada. I mean the actual world. One hundred seventeen different kids from forty seven countries. All of whom probably rate better than us at educating in math and science. Well my son has kicked the worlds butt for the last three years. (Oh, did I mention that he was the first ever rookie to win a World Championship?) He has never lost a match in world competition. The only bout he has ever lost was at the state level and overturned on replay. I have a smart kid.

My second rocking feat is that I've allowed my teenaged daughter to find her own way. For three years she has avoided PE because she was going to do the work program which allows her to opt out of two years of PE. The catch was she needed a JOB. I am so proud that I did not nag, but must confess that it was not from a pure heart. I was really looking forward to her having to do two hours of PE every day for the year. OK so I'm secretly evil. But I love her, and she has a job.

My proudest moment came when I realized I had taught four kids to swim. I will briefly profile them for you. Our eight year old boy does NOT like water. If his face gets wet, ohmigahd. This goes beyond the eight year old boy water issues I'm familiar with. I have never known one to shower or bathe without a LOT of hassle, but our boy really hated water. And now he can swim.

Next in line is our three year old boy. This boy has NO fear. NONE. We have really tried to instill some sort of healthy fear into him. We have tied him to bungee cords and shot him 25 feet in the air, he was bored silly. We tried swimming lessons last year and it confused him. For three weeks all he heard was "Do not jump in the water" well, it came time to jump in the water, the guy says "jump" and our little boy jumps, but not into the water, he jumps up and down. Cute, but there will be therapy involved later in life because everyone laughed. So, no lessons this year, just mom letting him jump in the pool, and letting him sink or swim. He can dive about five feet to get stuff off the bottom of the pool. It's very cool.

The other two that I taught, were our two year old boy, girl twins. The boy can, the girl pretty much can. Peer pressure is a great thing. The second our three year old took off his floaties, the two year old boy said, "i'm a big boy" and there would be no floaties for him. And he can swim. Now, I'm not saying that they are at the point where I can go sit in the hot tub while they are at the pool, but if they fall in, they won't die.

Of course looking back, I actually did nothing except let my kids do it for themselves. I didn't build a robot, or get a job, or make anyone learn to swim. And NONE of it would have happened had I not married well. But I did marry well, and that allowed me to be the facilitator of all things cool.

For those keeping score, that is six kids, three born of the body, all born of the heart. And being their mom is REALLY cool.