As I sit here on my porch, looking out over the lake, I hear the sounds of the future coming from our outdoor performance venue and the practice cabins nearby. I’m the Director of Marketing and PR for the New England Music Camp in Sidney, ME and I happen to know that the kids here will go on to become successful in whatever profession they choose to pursue as adults. I know this because I spent every summer here as a teenager and have seen friends go on to successful careers, not just in music, but also as leaders in the medical field, technology, graphic arts and a host of other professions. So many of the opportunities that I have had in my life have come as a result of my involvement in music.

Amidst the debate on how to improve school performance despite educational budget cuts, arts education programs are being slashed from the core curriculum in many of our nation’s public schools. There seems to be a very clear focus on the end result (test scores) over the actual process of learning. Children who learn to play an instrument develop critical thinking skills, spatial/relational skills, and learn how to collaborate. These are all essential skills for success in any discipline or profession.

I was really happy to learn that Quaker Chewy Granola Bars has joined forces with the non-profit organization Little Kids Rock and recording artist Nick Jonas to make music education more accessible in schools across the nation. Little Kids Rock focuses on ensuring every public school student has an opportunity to experience music education. The arts are an essential part of any education and many of those children who are not cheated of a music education will be the ones who go on to cure disease, explore space, and negotiate peace in the world.

Quaker Chewy Granola Bars is teaming up with recording artist Nick Jonas to launch a new singing competition for kids. The Quaker Chewy Superstar Search, was created to give parents of kids ages 8 – 14* a platform to showcase their kid’s vocal talents. Four finalists of the Quaker Chewy Superstar Search will each receive a $1,000 cash prize. The Grand Prize winner will get to record a song produced by Nick Jonas,  an online music video, a contract with Jonas Group Management and $5,000 in cash.

The Quaker Chewy Superstar Mobile Recording Studio will be making stops at select cities across the country to give kids the chance to record a singing performance of one of 4 pre-selected songs and have that superstar ‘moment’ they deserve. The tour will make nine stops including:

June 9: New York City metro area	July 9 and 11: Atlanta metro area
June 11– 12: New Jersey metro area	July 18 – 20 Dallas metro area
June 17 and 19: Cleveland metro area	July 26 and 28: Denver metro area
June 23 and 25: Chicago metro area	August 2 – 4: Los Angeles metro area
July 2 and 4: Nashville metro area

 

Visit www.ChewySuperstar.com for exact locations, dates and times.

Quaker Chewy Superstar MP3 player and Quaker Chewy Granola Bars Giveaway!!

To help spread the word, Quaker has asked that I host a giveaway. One lucky BB reader will win an MP3 player and Chewy Granola Bars!

Enter to win:

• Leave a comment on this post that answers the following question: How has arts education or the lack of it impacted your life?
• Like New England Music Camp and Quaker Chewy Granola Bars on Facebook.
• Follow @banteringblonde and @QuakerChewy

Readers must leave a separate comment for each entry. Must enter by 12am EST 7/21/11.

 

*I have been compensated for this post. All opinions are my own based on my own experiences.

I have a teeny little feeling in the pit of my stomach tonight. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt anything quite like it so it’s very difficult to describe but I am 100% positive that it is related to the fact that I dropped my boys off at summer camp today. I’m so excited for them and, despite feeling as if I might vomit at any moment, I know that they are in for a life-changing two weeks at Sanborn Western Camps. From the moment we arrived at their cabins both boys were swarmed by fellow cabin-mates curious to know their names and where they were from. The counselors introduced themselves with a handshake and helped them in with their gear. It’s all a bit of a blur. Well, except for the part where the kid and parent are supposed to embrace in the most desperate of hugs and promise to miss each other and write every day. Or maybe it was just a nice long hug and wave as they watched me drive away.

That part?

Pretty sure it never happened. In fact, it did not happen. Neither version happened.

I knew both boys would be fine, that there would be no tears. I’m a huge advocate of summer camp, a good portion of my work is now centered around summer camps and both boys have been quite excited about being able to head off on their own for the first time. My eldest is a bit miffed that he’ll be gone over his birthday but you’d never know he’d even given it a though by the way he brushed me off as I tried to hug him goodbye. I wasn’t prepared for him to not want to hug me goodbye!

I even said to him, “Let me hug you in here so I don’t have to embarrass you outside with my mama love.”

“Mooooom,” he said as he turned away from me and headed out the door to hang with his new crew.

OUCH.

Too cool for even a secret farewell on his very first time at sleep-away camp? I’m swelling with pride and swallowing tears at the same time. How on earth did my sensitive, feeling, lovey guy suddenly become so grown up??

Henry’s cabin had been our first stop and he had been so darn “Happy Henry” that he literally plopped his things down, claimed a bed (not a shock that it happened to be in the center of the room), hopped up on it and lay back all settled as if he’d been there a million times before. This is my happy guy and exactly how I expected it. I even got a quick distracted hug as he ran off to be with his new friends.

My boys are in a spectacular setting at one of the best camps in the country with camp professionals that I’ve had the great pleasure of getting to know very well since their involvement with a program MomActive streamed live on MomTV last spring. I joke with Ariella that fate brought us together but this is no joke, friends! I know this, not just because Ariella has directly impacted my personal and professional world in more ways than could ever be expressed in one post, but because she was there today and she hugged me. She hugged me hello and she hugged me goodbye. We ate lunch, fed horses, and chatted up the goats, and she hugged me goodbye. In fact, she may have hugged me goodbye twice. She was my surrogate hugger. Tell me that’s not fate.

The reality is, I know that my boys are safe. I know they are well. I also know that I miss them more than they miss me right now! I sure am glad that Baby Bear didn’t get invited to summer camp. I wonder if Henry knows that I’m taking very good care of Baby Bear and making sure he doesn’t get lonely? *sniff*

The hardest part of parenting for me is letting go. Letting my kids travel a path I know has an easier route is incredibly frustrating. I’ve been a parent for 11 years to one, 8 years to another, and 5 to the youngest. All three are their own unique brand of “Bryan” and I’ve learned that there is no one formula for loving each of them. Children are miraculous and frustrating every moment of their lives. Until I became a parent I didn’t know true love, I didn’t know true frustration, true anger, true admiration, true wonder, true shame-I didn’t know the true feeling of desperation and fear. Nothing prepares you to be a parent-to experience such deep and raw emotion.

Learning to let go is a daily challenge for me but it is a challenge that I have realized I must purposely practice each day. I find it difficult to observe the “helicopter parenting” that seems to pervade our culture and while I feel confident in many of the choices we’ve made for our kids, I still have to remind myself to stand back and allow them the freedom to make their own choices and to experience the consequences of those choices, good or bad.

One of the areas of greatest tension with our kidlets is their instrument practice. In our house, my husband and I have decided that music is an important part of our children’s overall education and they would each take lessons on an instrument of their choice. Those of you who know me well know that I studied violin from a young age and have both bachelor and master’s degrees in music. I no longer play or teach professionally but I feel very strongly that music and music education are an important part of the greater academic picture for our children. In fact, while we require they play an instrument, I secretly hope that none of them is seduced into the profession because it is an incredibly challenging life, one that was not ultimately for me. They fight practice, as most children do, but each time they perform or have a good lesson the pride and confidence in their smiles reassures me that this is important and will be with them for a lifetime.

In any case, here we are, over a week into summer break and the boys are actually quite independent in practicing their violins every morning, then checking in to show me what they worked on before heading off to enjoy freedom. Since pulling myself out of the daily practice sessions they have actually done very well on their own. Proof in my argument that children gain more self confidence and a sense of responsibility when they are actually handed the responsibility and held accountable for the things we ask them to do.

On the other hand, my 5 year old is still dependent on me to help her practice piano.  Oh, how painful it is for a parent to watch their child so agreeable and brilliant in front of their teacher, only to pull out the drama during practice sessions at home. She turns into a silly child that refuses to focus and doesn’t even seem to try. The tears and drama from this child could be award winning!

… I’ve gone through this phase with 3 kidlets now. Friends will tell me how jealous they are that I am able to practice and help my kids with their musical instruments but honestly, I think my kids would be happier if I didn’t know anything about what they were doing. From the time they started I search for the best teachers, the teachers that engage me as part of the process and enable me to help them practice at home…..my kids are able to practice more efficiently because they don’t pick up bad habits, and I know all of the best practice techniques to get ‘er done. They hate it though-they have all fought me and I know that it is common but as soon as my oldest was given direction from his teacher to practice on his own, without me,  he began to progress more quickly, take pride, and most importantly gain confidence. H (8 year-old) and I now have an agreement that I’ll only practice with him every other day and this has worked very well for us. Maybe Kat would do better to practice on her own some? She and I will have two weeks on our own this summer and I’m hoping that we can get into a routine without the distraction of our usual daily chaos…..

I’m sure every parent has an area of experience they think they might be able to influence, prepare, or protect their child from. The reality is that human nature forces us to operate from a place of experience and no matter how hard we try we cannot instill true experience in our children – we can do our best to share our experience but until they experience and organically grow through and get to where it is we want them to be, we will have to let them take their own path. That path is a little bit longer than the one we may feel they need to take and sitting back and sitting on my hands, smiling and watching this is the hardest part of parenting for me.

Do you have an area of experience that you feel benefits your kids? How do you work with them to share that experience?

Weiner. Weiner. Weiner.

I don’t know about you but I’m not shocked by anything anyone does anymore. I have to hope there are some faithful men out there (and the one snoring next to me better be included), but even the faithful ones are horny. All men are horny and juvenile when it comes to sex and boobies and Weiners. Not all of them are stupid enough to take a picture of their snausage, tweet it to the world, and then lie about it but let’s be real here, it could have happened to anyone.

Right?

How many times have you DM’d something to your TBFF (Twitter BFF), only to realize that, in fact, the announcement of your most recent yeast infection somehow slipped out to all of your 5,108 followers!! Ah, delete, delete, delete. Uh, ya…. not quite the same thing as taking a picture and trust me, no gal I know would ever take a picture of her yeast infection, so you’re safe.

Friends. Men. Women (women get horny too, I’m sure). There are no “take backs” with Twitter. In fact, there are no “take backs” with pretty much any digital footprint-or Weiner. So, take your horny hormones and lock yourself in a private bug/video-free room ’cause I’m tired of Nancy Pelosi launching ethics investigations on yer asses.  If you’d all just keep your horny hormones private maybe the yokels in Washington might actually get a chance to do something of value.

Can we all just agree that there are no ethics, that horny politicians are stupid, and that illicit affairs, phone sex or whatever else that isn’t illegal or harmful to another human being, are all just a perk of the slimy job. Perks for Pervs. Hmm, that bill just might pass.

 

*Please don’t email or flame me, I don’t actually think Perks for Pervs is a good idea. Well, it might be a good idea but I wouldn’t endorse it.

Over the past year or so I’ve been creating a “40 Before 40” list-a bucket list of things I’d like to accomplish before I turn 40. There are several things on that list that I’ve been able to check off, others that may or may not happen, and several that I am determined to make happen because they are important to me. I haven’t published the list, I’ve mentioned it but haven’t been able to bring myself to put it out there. If you are wondering why, you can read about that in a post from early this year, here.

This August I will turn 39 and one of the items on my bucket list is “Train for and complete a full marathon”. Since training for a marathon is a fairly time consuming process I have just over a year to get this sucker done. This spring I started to take my race training more seriously and even joined a group training for the Denver Rock n’ Roll Marathon in October.  When I finished my very first half-marathon about 7 years ago I felt fantastic and in my mind didn’t think I’d ever have the desire to train for a full marathon. I also wasn’t sure my body would ever stand up to the distances required during training, never mind running fast enough to finish within the course time limits of most marathons. In those 7 years I’ve gotten stronger, started practicing yoga regularly and then last summer while I was running up the ski mountain at Beaver Creek (for fun), I realized that my body can do amazing things and if I really wanted to I absolutely could finish a marathon. So, friends…. I did it, I am officially registered for the Denver Rock n’ Roll Marathon on October 9, 2011!!!!

There’s no backing out now-it’s on the blog, it’s a done deal….

What is on your bucket list? What are you doing to reach your goals?

While the rest of y’all gab on about Arnold Swarzenegger his growing brood, I want to talk about Justin Timberlake. Dude is seriously the best SNL host ever. I watch snippets of SNL on Hulu from time to time but last night I watched the whole dang thing. I enjoyed it so much that I have decided not to drop by and tell him that he really needs to consider switching the brand of antiperspirant he uses. The opening monologue was a song about how he wasn’t going to sing, so if you want to hear Justin Timberlake sing and see his sweaty armpits here ya go!

Since the world is supposed to come to an end tomorrow night at 6pm I thought it would be fun to encourage folks to purge themselves in a confessional of sorts here on BB. I’ll get the ball rolling and reveal 5 of my dirty little secrets….

1. I am a 38 year-old Gleek and not only do I watch Glee regularly, I have dreams at least once a week that I am the girl that turns Blaine straight.
2. I am addicted to Skittles.
3. While I traded my Diet Coke addiction for a Skittle addiction, I still order Diet Coke at restaurants.
4. I got a teeny bit of Botox yesterday for the 11 between my eyes.
5. The training schedule called for a 40 min tempo run this morning, but the world is ending so I decided to sleep in.

Confess, my friends! Tell us all your dirty little secrets!